Mount Valérien

About

Mont Valérien is a hill in the Hauts-de-Seine department, in the territories of the communes of Suresnes (mainly), Nanterre and Rueil-Malmaison, west of Paris (about 12 kilometres from the parvis of Notre-Dame and two kilometres from the bridge of Suresnes, on the border of the territories of Paris and Suresnes). From the 17th to the beginning of the 19th century, its upper part hosts a religious ordeal, object of pilgrimages, while its hillsides are occupied by vineyards. The building was destroyed from 1841 and replaced by the fortress of Mont-Valérien, for the protection of the capital.

During the 1870 war with Prussia, the French army took refuge there, from where it bombed the castle of Saint-Cloud. From 1941 to 1944, during the German occupation, more than a thousand hostages and resistors were executed there. Behind the southern wall of the fort, the memorial of France combatant, inaugurated on 18 June 1960 by General de Gaulle, is erected in honour of the fighters, resistors and deportees of the Second World War.