After having been a place of worship in the Middle Ages, then a military fortress in the 19th century, Mont-Valérien is the place where 1,008 Resistance members, hostages, Jews and Communists were executed between 1941 and 1944. This sad record makes it the leading place of execution by the Nazi army in France.
After the War ended, on 18 June 1960, General de Gaulle inaugurated a gigantic Memorial on the site in tribute to Fighting France and the many victims who were part of it. The names of those shot are engraved in chronological order of execution date. On the site overlooking the capital, the "Remembrance Trail allows visitors to follow the path taken by those sentenced to death. This moving trail begins at the chapel, where the execution posts still stand and where some of the walls bear traces of the many graffiti left behind by the prisoners, and ends in the clearing where the shootings took place."
