The Bastille's round towers fill the picture, glowing in low evening light under a stormy sky. Tiny workers swarm along the broken parapets, and blocks of stone crash into the dry moat in clouds of white dust, while black smoke drifts up from the governor's house. In the foreground, people with their backs to us watch and sort through the rubble. Hubert Robert painted it from life as the demolition began.

The work started at dawn on July 15, 1789, and was officially ordered the next day by Paris's permanent committee, with the contractor Pierre-François Palloy in charge. A stone at the lower right is inscribed with the date of July 20, 1789, and "H. Robert pinxit." It is considered one of the first artistic images of the events of the French Revolution. Shown at the Salon of 1789, it was reportedly given by Robert to the Marquis de Lafayette, who hung it at his château of La Grange.

It came to the Musée Carnavalet as a gift in 1929, and measures about 30 by 45 inches (77 × 114 cm). It is in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris.