Colonne de la Grande Armée, Wimille
Four kilometres north of Boulogne in the village of Wimille stands a 53-metre marble column that Napoleon ordered built in 1804 to commemorate the Legion of Honour's founding — and to celebrate an invasion of England that never happened. Almost no tourists make it here, yet the views from the base across the Boulonnais hills and the Channel are superb and the monument itself is genuinely imposing.
The Monument's Strange History
Napoleon assembled 180,000 troops in the Camp de Boulogne between 1803 and 1805, waiting for the French navy to clear the Channel long enough for an invasion flotilla to cross. The column was begun during this period as a morale-boosting project and a celebration of the newly created Legion of Honour.
When the invasion was abandoned after Trafalgar and Napoleon pivoted east toward Austerlitz, construction slowed dramatically. The column was eventually completed under Louis-Philippe in 1841, topped with a bronze Napoleon in full imperial regalia — an oddly triumphalist ending to a failed military adventure.
Visiting the Site
The column sits in a small park with a keeper's lodge and a modest interpretive panel explaining the Camp de Boulogne's history. You can climb the internal staircase on certain days in summer for views across the Canche and Liane valleys all the way to the sea.
The surrounding village of Wimille is quiet and pretty, with a handful of stone houses and a church that predates the column by several centuries. The local boulangerie on the main street makes excellent ficelles Picardes if you time your visit right.
How to Combine It
The column is a natural add-on to a morning at Cap Blanc-Nez — it sits directly on the D901 road north from Boulogne, so you pass it on the way. It takes no more than 45 minutes to visit properly and costs almost nothing.
Very few guidebooks flag this site, which means you will almost certainly have the grassy park entirely to yourself — a rare thing for a monument of this scale and historical weight.
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