The modern Château d'If maintains a roughly hewn dungeon in honour of Dantès as a tourist attraction.Īs was common practice in those days, prisoners were treated differently according to their class and wealth. In reality, no one is known to have done this. After fourteen years, Dantès makes a daring escape from the castle, becoming the first person ever to do so and survive. In the novel, the main character Edmond Dantès (a commoner who later purchases the noble title of Count) and his mentor, Abbé Faria, were both imprisoned in it. The island became internationally famous in the 19th century when Alexandre Dumas used it as a setting for his novel The Count of Monte Cristo, published to widespread acclaim in 1844. Over 3,500 Huguenots (French Calvinists/identifying Christians) were sent to Château d'If, as was Gaston Crémieux, a leader of the Paris Commune, who was shot there in 1871. Its use as a dumping ground for political and religious detainees soon made it one of the most feared and notorious jails in France. The isolated location and dangerous offshore currents of the Château d'If made it an ideal escape-proof prison, very much like the island of Alcatraz in California in more recent times. The cell named after Edmond Dantès at the Château d'If It remained there for 18 years, until King Louis XVIII granted Kléber a proper burial in his native Strasbourg. First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, fearing that his tomb would become a symbol to Republicanism, ordered that the body stay at the château. The embalmed body of general Jean Baptiste Kléber was repatriated to France after his assassination in Cairo in 1800. The whole been very badly built with little care All the buildings very crudely done ill made." In 1701, the military engineer Vauban questioned its suitability to defend against an actual attack: "The fortifications look like the rock they are fully rendered, but very roughly and carelessly, with many imperfections. The closest that it came to a genuine test of strength was in July 1531, when the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V made preparations to attack Marseille. The castle's principal military value was as a deterrent it never had to fight off an actual attack. It was built from 1524–31 on the orders of King Francis I, who, during a visit in 1516, saw the island as a strategically important location for defending the coastline from sea-based attacks. The " château" is a square, three-story building 28 m (92 ft) long on each side, flanked by three towers with large gun embrasures.
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