Museum of Plan Reliefs - Lille

The extraordinary atmosphere of this place is to take the viewer back to the time of the great Vauban - and to stand in awe at the engineer, and the model makers.

"The more my uncle Toby drank of this sweet fountain of science, the greater was the heat and impatience of his thirst, so that, before the first year of his con- finement had well gone round, there was scarce a fortified town in Italy or Flanders, of which, by one means or other, he had not procured a plan, reading over as he got them, and carefully collating there- with the histories of their sieges, their de- molitions, their improvements and new works, all which he would read with that intense application and delight, that he would forget himself, his wound, his confinement, his dinner.   In the second year my uncle Toby pur- chased Ramelli and Cataneo, translated                           from

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A view of Namur from the Italian ; ---- likewise Stevinus, Marolis, the Chevalier de Ville, Lorini, Coehorn, Sheeter, the Count de Pagan, the Marshal Vauban, Mons. Blondel, with almost as many more books of military architecture, as Don Quixote was found to have of chivalry, when the curate and barber invaded his library. "