France celebrated its biggest holiday, Bastille Day, on Monday with 7000 people marching, on horseback or riding armoured vehicles along the cobblestones of the Champs-Elysees, the most iconic avenue in Paris.

And there are plans for partying and pageantry around the country. Why Bastille Day is a big deal? Parisians stormed the Bastille fortress and prison on July 14, 1789, a spark for the French Revolution that overthrew the monarchy. 

In the ensuing two centuries, France saw Napoleon’s empire rise and fall, more uprisings and two world wars before settling into today’s Fifth Republic, established in 1958.