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Bastille Day @ Eastern State, Photo by L. Wuillermin for GPTMC

With all the July 4th festivities going on around town, it might be easy to forget that there’s another festival hitting Philadelphia next week. Well don’t forget! Because the annual Bastille Day Festival is a whole lot of fun.

The Bastille Day Festival starts on Saturday, July 10th, at 2pm in front of Eastern State. There’s a pet parade at 2pm, a French fashion show at 2:30pm, and a Tricycle Tour de France, which awards prizes for the best French decorated bikes, at 3pm.

However, the festival hits its peak at 5:30pm, when local businesses and Eastern State team up for a Monty Python-esque reenactment of the Storming of the Bastille. Hear Marie Antoinette yell “Let them eat Tastykake!” as 2,000 of the delicious little snack cakes are flung from the prison’s towers.

Eastern State is also hosting a special late night, 25-minute evening tour after the reenactment, set at just $10 per person.

Several events surround the festival, including a French Fling Crawl on July 8th and a French Champagne Brunch at the London Grill on Sunday, July 11th. Spend the entire weekend in Fairmount! You won’t regret it. It’s a wild and quirky festival not to be missed.

Bastille Day @ Eastern State Penitentiary
22nd Street and Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19130
(215) 236-3300
www.easternstate.org