My only reason for going to Paris in 2006 was to take an all-day tour of the D-Day Landing Beaches. I had an extra two days there before taking the Euro-Star to London, so I visited the Louvre, and saw as much as I could both days, including the Mona Lisa. I went back to Paris from London for an overnight stay the following year with an old work friend because they had never been there. We took a boat ride down the Seine, hit the Louvre, saw the Mona Lisa again, and visited Chateau de Vincennes, which was just outside of Paris.
The building of Vincennes began in the 14th Century. Henry V of England died there on August 31, 1422, and the Marquis de Sade had been a prisoner there. During the First World War, the Dutch-born German spy Mata Hari was executed by a firing squad on October 15, 1917, in the moat of the Chateau.
During WWII, the Germans overwhelmed the French military that had been using Vincennes as a base to fight from. When the Nazis took it over, they stationed Waffen-SS soldiers there, and used it as a prison for resistance fighters. According to sources cited by Wikipedia: "One of the first members of the French Resistance, Jacques Bonsergent, was tried and executed there on November 10, 1940. On 20 August 1944, during the battle for the Liberation of Paris, 26 policemen and members of the Resistance arrested by soldiers of the Waffen-SS were executed in the eastern moat of the fortress, and their bodies thrown in a common grave. That same evening, French and American forces were closing in on the eastern part of Paris, and before they evacuated Vincennes, the Nazis blew up substantial parts of it.
...very interesting reply.....thanks!