This Saturday, July 4, the United States celebrates 250e anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1776). An important event across the Atlantic and celebrated throughout 2026 through various events across the country. This historic date also offers us the opportunity to recall the importance of France’s role in this emancipation from the British crown.
Through the recognition of this proclamation, then the military commitment alongside American troops, the French monarchy sealed one of the most important and strongest Western alliances, which continues to this day. To mark this anniversary, we invite you to discover places and monuments, world famous for some and more confidential for others, which refer to this period in France.
1. The Palace of Versailles (Yvelines)
The Palace of Versailles occupies a symbolic place in the history of American independence. It is here that the United States, as an independent nation, will be recognized for the first time by a foreign power. This choice made by Louis XVI in 1777 later materialized by a treaty of alliance signed in February 1778, which recorded the military support of the Kingdom of France for the American forces in their war of independence (1775-1783) and the entry into war of France against the United Kingdom. A founding act which led to a meeting at the Palace of Versailles between King Louis XVI and Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a few weeks later in 1778.
The link between Versailles and the young United States of America continued in 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the Franco-British War after the recognition of American independence by the British monarchy. Then it strengthened in June 1919 with the signing of another Treaty of Versailles, in the presence of American President Woodrow Wilson, this time ending the First World War.
2. The castle of Chavaniac-Lafayette (Haute-Loire)
Another castle having a prominent place in the Franco-American relationship and the independence of the United States, the Château de Chavaniac or Château Lafayette, located in the town of Chavaniac-Lafayette, in Haute-Loire. This residence saw the birth and growth of the Marquis de La Fayette, whose real name was Gilbert du Motier (1757-1834). An officer and politician, he became the face of the alliance between France and the United States in 1777, when he took the initiative to cross the Atlantic Ocean to join the ranks of the American army at just 19 years old.
The Marquis de La Fayette is still today one of the most famous French people in the United States and one of the eight honorary citizens of the country alongside the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965), the nun Mother Teresa (1910-1997) and William Penn (1644-1718), the founder of Pennsylvania. If you travel across the Atlantic, you will not be surprised to come across this name around a square, a park, a town or a historic site.
3. The “Hermione” (Bayonne-Anglet, Pyrénées-Atlantiques)
The American adventure of the Marquis de La Fayette is inseparable from the two ships he took to cross the Atlantic: the Victory in 1777 and theHermione in 1780. If the two frigates no longer exist today, the construction of an identical replica of theHermione was launched in 1997 and completed in 2014.
A year later, she even crossed the Atlantic Ocean to reach the United States and relive the journey of the man nicknamed “the hero of both worlds”. Today in dry dock in the port of Bayonne-Anglet (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), the ship is open to visitors and constitutes an essential stopover for anyone interested in the relationship between the two sides of the Atlantic.
4. Porte Désilles (Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle)
The gilding of Versailles and the glorious history of the Marquis de La Fayette should not, however, make us forget that French people sacrificed their lives in America to support the cause of independence. There are approximately 2,000 French soldiers who died on American soil and 8,000 across all Franco-British theaters of war over the period.
If each town has a monument to the dead of the First and Second World Wars, those for the American War of Independence are much rarer. But in Nancy, you will find the Désilles gate (or Désilles memorial), not only the oldest war memorial in France (built between 1782 and 1785) and one of the few to have been designed to pay homage to these soldiers in particular. One of the sides is also decorated with bas-reliefs relating to the Treaty of Versailles of 1783.
5. Paris, the heart of the memory of independence
Unsurprisingly, it is in Paris that we find the greatest concentration of places of memory linked to the independence of the United States. Swan Island (XVe and XVIe arrondissements), near the Eiffel Tower, has hosted since 1889 a small replica of the Statue of Liberty by Auguste Bartholdi and a plaque commemorating the French and American revolutions.
The XVIe The district hosts a full-size replica of the flame of the Statue of Liberty, offered by the United States to France in 1987, on Place Diana, near the Pont de l’Alma tunnel. A short distance away is also the Place desUnis, in the Chaillot district, where we find the Thomas-Jefferson square and two monuments paying tribute: one to the Marquis de La Fayette and George Washington, the other to the American soldiers who died during the First World War. As for the tomb of the Marquis de La Fayette, decorated with an American flag, it is visible in the 12the district, at the Picpus cemetery.
However, this list only represents a fraction of the places charged with this history in Paris. For a more complete presentation, viewing the map (see below) created by Lauric Henneton, historian and lecturer in American studies at the University of Versailles – Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, is highly recommended and a good source of ideas for a tourist day in the heart of the capital that is a little off the beaten track.
Whether in Paris or in the regions, France is full of sites representing the oldest alliance in the United States. This 250e anniversary of the independence of Uncle Sam’s country is therefore an opportunity for us, French, to travel across the Atlantic without leaving France, by going to (re)discover this heritage.
