Barrage Vauban

This guide to the Barrage Vauban in Strasbourg follows the engineer Jacques Tarade, who raised this thirteen-arched dam across the river Ill between 1686 and 1690 to a design by Vauban, the era's master of siege warfare: close the sluices, and the surrounding farmland turns to impassable marsh. It sat loaded and unused for nearly two centuries until Prussian armies surrounded the city in 1870 and the gates finally closed. You'll pass through the same stone corridor soldiers once crossed to work the sluice gates, past a vaulted gallery holding fragments rescued from Strasbourg Cathedral itself. Climb to the roof for a view across Petite France on one side and the cathedral spire on the other.