Barricade

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Barricade (disambiguation).

Polish barricade during the Warsaw Uprising

A barricade is any object or structure that creates a barrier or obstacle to control, block passage or force the flow of traffic in the desired direction.

As a military term, the barricade denotes any improvised field fortification, most notably on the city streets during urban warfare. Barricades featured heavily in the various European revolutions of the late 18th to early 20th centuries; Les Misérables famously describes the building and defending of a barricade during the Parisian insurrection of June 1832. A major aim of Haussmann's renovation of Paris under Napoléon III was to eliminate the potential of citizens to build barricades by widening streets into avenues too wide for barricades to block.

It is also used to describe the devices actually used for this purpose which can include temporary traffic barricades designed with the goal of dissuading passage into a protected or hazardous area or large slabs of cement whose goal is to actively prevent forcible passage by a vehicle.

There are also pedestrian barricades - sometimes called bike rack barricades or police barriers. They originated in France approximately 50 years ago and are now produced around the world. They were first produced in the U.S. 40 years ago by Friedrichs Mfg for New Orleans's Mardi Gras parades.