Guided tour of Fort Sainte-Agnès (Maginot Line military structure)

The Maginot Line Fort at Fort de Sainte-Agnès invites you to discover an impressive military structure built between 1932 and 1938, perched on a strategic rocky outcrop overlooking the French-Italian border. A veritable underground city carved out of the rock, it boasts over 2,000 m² of galleries and underground rooms equipped with ultra-modern technology for the time: electricity, heating, ventilation, hospital, telephone network and internal railroad. The fort had a formidable firepower, making it the most heavily armed structure in the Southern Alps. With a garrison of 372 men, it played an active role in the fighting of May-June 1940, contributing to the only French victory of the campaign in the Alps, by blocking the advance of Italian troops towards Menton. The guided tour explains the workings of a structure capable of accommodating several hundred men in total autonomy, thanks to its living facilities and artillery system. It also offers an insight into the daily lives of the soldiers, the military engineering of the period and the turbulent history of the Franco-Italian border. Three former ammunition rooms have now been converted into exhibition spaces. They present the findings of excavations at the castral site dating back to 963, the history of the Battle of the Alps and the evolution of our region's borders over the centuries. This immersive tour is an exceptional testimony to the military history of the XXᵉ century, and allows visitors to discover, in the heart of the mountains, one of the most remarkable works of the Alpine Maginot Line.