His mega tourist destination Chateau d'If acquired by two characters - a prisoner in the Iron Mask and Edmond Dantes. The first was a real person (but who is still not set, there are several versions of this account) and held in other prisons in France, in addition to this. And the second, too, had never been to the castle, because it did not exist at all, and was coined by Alexandre Dumas as the hero of the novel "The Count of Monte Cristo." Incidentally, the Iron Mask was also described in another Dumas novel "The Vicomte de Bragelonne."

The two prisoners in the dungeons of the Chateau d'If were allocated two chambers after the opening of the museum here. In the castle you can see excerpts from various adaptations of the novel, see other exhibits related to the novel "The Count of Monte Cristo." The cameras, which contained the real prisoners left traces in the history of France a person, marked signs with their names. Among them - the political leader of the Revolution Count Mirabeau, commander in chief of the French Army, General Kleber.

For most of its history Chateau d'If served as a prison for the most dangerous in terms of the French state criminals. It contained Huguenots, disgraced politicians, leaders of the Paris Commune, and the most dangerous criminals.

This fortress was built in the first half of the XVI century on the orders of King Francis I as a defensive structure to protect Marseille. Prison, she became at the end of the XVI century, and it remained a fact until 1871. His novel Alexandre Dumas wrote in 1845, and in 1890, the castle was open to curious visitors.

As a prison castle overgrown with many legends and gained fame as the place from which it is impossible to escape, many prisoners died from the terrible conditions of detention, and their bodies were thrown from the walls of the castle in the sea. From prison on the island of If it has been committed only one escape, and he is a fictional undertaken Dumas hero Edmond Dantes. A castle as a fort was never attacked, as enemies have one kind of terrified of this fortress.