Who designed and built the Bastille fortress in the 14th century?

Who designed and built the Bastille fortress in the 14th century? Hugues Aubriot designed and built the main fortress.

Aubriot was Provost of Paris under King Charles V, who ordered stronger defenses for the city’s eastern approach during the Hundred Years’ War. Construction of the larger Bastille began in 1370 on the site of an earlier fortified gateway near the Porte Saint-Antoine. Aubriot oversaw the project and is conventionally credited with building the fortress.

The work continued after Charles V’s death in 1380 and was completed under his son, Charles VI, probably in the early 1380s. The finished structure had eight massive towers connected by curtain walls, surrounded by a ditch and designed to protect a strategically important entrance to Paris.

Aubriot’s connection with the Bastille later became unexpectedly personal: he was imprisoned there, making him the first known prisoner held in the fortress he had helped create. The Bastille was originally a military stronghold, not primarily a prison; its reputation as a symbol of arbitrary royal imprisonment developed over later centuries.