The years 1870-1871 were terrible for the French city of Saint-Cloud, when Prussian torches burned the castle and village to the ground.
“One cannot envision the disaster without having seen it. Saint-Cloud should remain in our minds like the destruction of Pompeii,” wrote Theophile Gautier in March 1871 in Tableaux de siège.
Today, no traces of the war of 1870 are left in Saint-Cloud. The reconstructed city is a pleasant suburb of Paris, known for its picturesque setting and park, which once housed the remains of the kings of France.
With the exhibition Les ruines de Saint-Cloud, Le Musée des Avelines, the museum of art and history in Saint-Cloud, is opening the great book of history to this unknown chapter of the Siege of Paris.
