It takes about half a day to “get” Puy du Fou, the award-winning historical theme park in the Vendée region of France. It began 40 years ago as a nettle-covered crumbling castle discovered by the entrepreneur Phillipe de Villiers, who used it as a backdrop for a self-penned historical show that he aired outdoors to a small audience in 1978: picnic-in-the-park style, if you will.
Fast-forward to 2019 and his show, La Cinéscénie, has 2,550 performers. Every Friday and Saturday night in summer, alongside 190 horses and 80 technicians synching pyrotechnics to rival July 14 at Versailles, they bash out France’s history to a whopping 13,000 spectators.
And this is just one show. The 55-hectare park has a bill of historical entertainment with sets of…
