The key to the Bastille resides at Mount Vernon.

The Marquis de Lafayette had served under George Washington during the American Revolution, and when the French political prison fell in 1790 he sent the key to his former commander.

“Give me leave, my dear General,” he wrote, “to present you with a picture of the Bastille, just as it looked a few days after I had ordered its demolition,–with the main key of the fortress of despotism. It is a tribute, which I owe, as a son to my adoptive father, as an Aide-de-Camp to my General, as a Missionary of liberty to its Patriarch.”