France celebrates Bastille Day with grand parade on Champs-Elysees

Fireworks explode over the Garonne River, as part of the annual Bastille Day celebrations in Toulouse, southwestern France on Sunday night. PIC/AFP

France celebrated its biggest holiday, Bastille Day, on Monday with 7000 people marching, on horseback or riding armoured vehicles along the cobblestones of the Champs-Elysees, the most iconic avenue in Paris.

And there are plans for partying and pageantry around the country. Why Bastille Day is a big deal? Parisians stormed the Bastille fortress and prison on July 14, 1789, a spark for the French Revolution that overthrew the monarchy.

In the ensuing two centuries, France saw Napoleon's empire rise and fall, more uprisings and two world wars before settling into today's Fifth Republic, established in 1958.

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