City of Montgomery Bastille Day

Celebrating 19 years of friendship with Neuilly-Plaisance

Downtown Montgomery During Bastille Day July 12, 2008
Noon - 11:00 pm
Historical Downtown Montgomery

Bastille Day Picnic - July 11, 7-11 p.m. (Registration Required)

"Let them Eat Cake" is this year’s slogan for Montgomery’s annual Bastille Day festival that celebrates our friendship with sister city Nieully-Plaisance, France.  That theme is carried throughout the event with variety of French cuisine and wine as well as the local favorites: ribs, pizza, draft beer, sausages, hot dogs and more!

Entertainment

The entertainment is speckled with talent of all sorts and the sounds to keep you moving.  The stage lineup includes:

Food

Drinks

Bacardi Drinks, Specialty Beers, Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Light & Red and White Wine selections available. All Drink Tickets $4.00.

Soft drinks and bottled water sold for $1 by the Blue Ash Montgomery Rotary Club from noon - 11:00 pm.

Food

Bastille Day Featured Events

In the street café area guests can enjoy raffles, strolling artists, musicians, and cooking demonstrations.  The kids area is alive with games of luck, artistic projects, face painting, clowns and the “Under the Sea” moonwalk.

Wine Tasting

Hosted at Salon Bastille.  Cost $20 in advance or $25 at the door. Includes six featured wines for tasting.  Limit 50 guests.  Register now at City Hall or online.

Historic Walking Tour

Join a guide on a 45-minute walking tour of the exteriors of 10 of Montgomery’s preserved landmark homes and buildings c. 1804.  Meet at Universalist Church at 1pm and 5:30pm.  Free.

Guitar Hero Booth

Spend a buck to challenge your friends to a flying finger duel on the guitar playing some of the best rock songs! Open from 4:00 - 10:00 p.m.

Diaper Derby

Crawls into action at 4:00 pm.  Sign up at the City Information Booth to enter your “crawler” in the 3rd annual Diaper Derby.

Art Exhibits (inside Universalist Church)

Make this day a plan for great family fun or an evening at a fabulous summer fest for two!  Either way, the Bastille Day celebration in downtown historic Montgomery has something to offer to you.  Details available on the City website.

Tour de Montgomery - July 19, 2008

Tour de Montgomery - July 19, 2008

Don't forget, the following Saturday will feature the Tour de Montgomery bike ride with options for families (7miles) and for full-blown bike jockeys (70 miles).  The bike ride is a great compliment of our “French” theme and it is a fundraiser for a local cause too!

The significance of Bastille Day

For Montgomery, the event celebrates our City’s 19-years of friendship with our Sister City, Neuilly-Plaisance, France. This bond has been enriched throughout this time span by a variety of back-to back cultural exchanges with youth soccer teams, government officials, education professionals and craftsmen.  The summer street festival is a unique event organized for the enjoyment of our community members. It is also a fundraiser for the Sister Cities Commission to help support exchanges and programs like the annual International Reception that epitomizes the commission’s  motto…”Bringing the World Together One Friendship at a Time.”

To the French, Bastille Day is the French national holiday, celebrated annually on July 14 each year.  In France, the day is called “Fête Nationale.” The holiday commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789.

The anniversary of the storming of the Bastille was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern French nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution.

Festivities are held the morning of July 14, the largest on the Champs-Élysées avenue in Paris in the audience  of the President of the Republic.