Fort Boyard (France)

Fort Boyard is a fortification located on a shoal formed by a sandbank originally, called the "longe de Boyard" which is discovered at low tide and is located between the island of Aix in the northeast. , the island of Oléron to the southwest, with the Île Madame to the southeast and the Île de Ré to the north, belonging to the Charente archipelago. La Longe de Boyard is attached to the cadastre of the municipality of Île-d'Aix, in the department of Charente-Maritime.

If the construction of a defensive device on the “boyard's loin” was envisaged as early as the seventeenth century, the project did not materialize until the course of the nineteenth century. Built to protect the harbor, the mouth of the Charente, the port and especially the large arsenal of Rochefort from the assaults of the English navy, it was transformed into a prison barely a few years after its completion. Nicknamed "strong of the useless" by the local population during its long period of abandonment, the building is now mainly known throughout the world thanks to the game show of the same name, filmed on site since 1990.

Fort Boyard is an integral part of the Rochefort maritime arsenal which stretches all along the Charente estuary. Since 1989, Fort Boyard has been a property and today belongs to the Charente-Maritime department.

It has been the subject of an inscription as a historical monument since February 1, 1950.