Gare Montparnasse - History

History

The station opened in 1840 as Gare de l'Ouest, later being renamed. A second station was built between 1848 and 1852.

On 25 August 1944, the German military governor of Paris, General von Choltitz, surrendered his garrison to the French General Philippe Leclerc at the old station, after disobeying Adolf Hitler's direct order to destroy the city (see Liberation of Paris).

During the 1960s, a newer station integrated into a complex of office buildings was built. In 1969, the old station was torn down and the Tour Montparnasse built on its site. An extension was built in 1990 to host the TGV Atlantique.

  • Concourse of the station

  • Platform of the station

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