In the Hôtel des Invalides in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, is a museum dedicated to detailed military models of important towns and fortified cities across Europe. These models were created over the course of one hundred years during the 17th and 18th centuries so that French emperors could make strategic decisions on how to proceed with an attack on foreign land, or how to defend their own cities against foreign attack. These scale models are known as plans-relief and they were an important tool for military strategists of the Renaissance era, especially in France and Italy. Today, they stand as irreplaceable documentation of the represented sites and serve as valuable educational tools.
Mont-Saint-Michel in Musée des Plans-Reliefs. Photo credit: Joe Shlabotnik/Flickr
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