1 Quai de l'Horloge
Tel. 01 53 40 60 97
Subway: Cite
Open: Apr- Sep: 9:30am- 6:30pm daily
Oct- Mar: 9am- 5pm daily
Closed: 1 Jan, 1 May, 1&11 Nov, 25 Dec
Conciergerie is a former palace of the Capetian kings that also served as a prison between 1391 and 1914. Former Capetian palace gained notoriety during the Great French Revolution then it served as a prison for enemies of the Republic. Most of them died under blade of the guillotine. Among 4000 unfortunate souls was former French queen Austrian born Marie- Antoinette who was executed here in 1793. Some of the most notable features of Conciergerie is a medieval 14th century clock tower and a beautiful Gothic Hall.
The pavilion of the Guard was built around 1310
and served as an antechamber to the Great Hall (classroom), which
was the place where the king celebrated his solemn sessions of the
Cortes and where receptions took place. The meals were served on a
black marble table (of which there are some vestiges in the
Conciergerie). It was an immense hall supported by a row of pillars
that divided it into two vaults of paneled vaults. Walls and pillars
were adorned with statues representing the kings of France. The
pavilion of the soldiers was exceptional: 64 meters long by 27.5
wide with a height of 8.5 meters. It was built in 1302 and 1313 by
Enguerrand de Marigny. It served as a refectory for the more than
2,000 people who were at the king's service. The east façade is in
front of Barillerie street and, later, it was remodeled and
finished. On the west side (in the direction of the current
Vert-Galant point) the gardens were laid out. Behind the garden, the
king's rooms were rebuilt. Phillip IV had the janitor's house built.
In the middle of the fourteenth century, John II had built the
square pavilion that was destined for the king's servants built in
the corner of the palace of the Cité. The four rooms located west of
the soldiers' pavilion were isolated from the rest of the pavilion
by gates and a wall. Shortly after John II built a tower in the
northeast corner of the palace of the Cité, this rectangular tower
was called "Clock Tower" because it was installed in the first
public clock in France. In the second half of that century Charles V
of France decided to leave the Palace of the Cité and settle in the
palace of the Louvre whereas the widow of John II moved to the hôtel
Saint-Pol; however, he maintained his administration (Parliament,
House of Congress, Chamber of Commerce, Chancery) and appointed a
janitor. In the Middle Ages, the Ministry became the prison of the
palace. From that moment it was known as the prison of the
Conciergerie. Charles VII of France installed in the Conciergerie
the Parliament of Paris in the fifteenth century and Louis XVI built
new buildings.
The Great Hall was the seat of the Revolutionary Court from April 2,
1793 to May 31, 1795 (it is currently the "hall of lost steps" of
the Palace of Justice in Paris).
In the 6th century (probably in 508), King Clovis I of the Franks
chose the island of Cité for the construction of a palace, and for the
first time Paris became the official residence of the king. He lived
there until his death in 511. During the era of the Carolingian dynasty,
the center of the empire moved to the east; the monarchs abandoned their
palace, and the city was deserted.
At the end of the 10th
century, Hugh Capet (the first king of the Capetian dynasty) placed the
council and administration in the palace. Thus the castle became the
residence of the French kings, and Paris again became the capital of the
king of France, whereas under the last Carolingians it was Laon. For
four centuries, the Capetians worked to transform their fortress.
Hugo Capet's son Robert II the Pious (972-1031), having married
Constance of Arles (third wife), an ambitious woman who bore nine
children to the king, decided to enlarge the royal castle. He attached
curtains to the walls. In the north-east of the castle he built the
Royal Hall, where the Curia (Great Royal Council) met, in the west - the
Royal Chamber. In the same place where Louis IX would erect the
Sainte-Chapelle, Robert ordered to erect the chapel of Saint-Nicolas,
since his father granted the old royal chapel to the monks of the Order
of St. Magloire.
Louis VI the Tolstoy (1081/1078 - 1137) and his
friend Abbot Suger from the monastery of Saint-Denis did everything to
put the power of the church at the service of the monarchy and pacify
the vassals. Besieged by the lords, the king fortified the walls on the
western side of the fortress, demolished the ancient donjon and built a
powerful tower 11.70 meters in diameter with walls 3 meters thick, which
received in the 16th century. the name "Montgomery" and stood until the
18th century.
Louis VII the Young (or the Younger) (1120-1180)
enlarged the royal chambers and added a chapel to them, the lower chapel
of which would later become the Conciergerie chapel.
Philip II
Augustus (1165-1223) - a warlike king - became an innovator in the field
of military architecture; with the help of a whole cohort of engineers,
personally observing the progress of work, he built up the entire royal
domain with fortresses, protecting them with towers and donjons. The
palace in Sita became the center of power. In 1187, Philip II Augustus
receives Richard the Lionheart at the castle, in 1193 he celebrates his
wedding with Ingeborg of Denmark, and for the first time the royal
charters mention a “concierge” who receives a salary for the execution
of “small and medium justice” in the palace territory. In addition,
according to the testimony of the chronicler and doctor Rigord, Philip
II ordered to pave the fetid swamps around the palace, the smell of
which bothered him.
Saint Louis IX (1214-1270), being virtuous,
was not without ambition. He set out to become a beacon of the Western
Christian world and in 1239 acquired the holy relics of the Passion of
the Lord, exhibited them in the palace, specially building for them in
record time (1242-1248) a luxurious reliquary - the Sainte-Chapelle
chapel. For them the Treasury of Charters was erected; gallery de
Mercier, which connected the upper chapel of the palace with the royal
chambers; "Hall on the Waters", which served for ceremonies. Gradually
castles-fortresses lose their defensive role and become habitats. From
now on, the royal abode must meet the requirements of comfort and
luxury.
In the XIV century, under Philip IV the Handsome
(1268-1314), the fortress turned into the most luxurious palace in
Europe. Philip instructed the coadjutor of the French kingdom (chief
ruler) Enguerrand de Marigny (the future prisoner of the Conciergerie)
to build a palace, the new look of which would be a reflection of royal
grandeur. In addition, the coadjutor had the task of making the castle
as spacious as possible so that administrative services could fit in it.
For this, many houses that were close to the palace were expropriated.
The following were built: the Chamber of Investigation, Caesar's Tower,
the Silver Tower, a gallery for the transition to the Bonbec Tower, a
new fortress wall in the south, the Accounts Chamber opposite the
Sainte-Chapelle ... On the site of the Royal Hall, the Great Hall was
erected, much more spacious than the first. A huge table made of black
marble brought from Germany was placed in it, the walls were sheathed
with wooden panels, and on each of the supporting columns stood
polychrome statues of the kings of France created by Evrard of Orleans.
John II the Good (1319-1364) was the last to have a hand in a
medieval palace: he built floors above the gallery de Mercier for the
palace servants, built a building for kitchens, a square tower (Clock
Tower), on which his son Charles V the Wise in 1370 placed the first
city watch.
At the end of the 14th century, the history of the
royal palace ended. In 1358, a popular uprising took place under the
leadership of the Parisian provost Etienne Marcel. Taking advantage of
the absence of King John II, who was captured by the British, he
organized the murder of two of his advisers, and in front of the future
king Charles V. Having become king, Charles V left the castle and the
island of Cité, setting up a residence in the Saint-Paul mansion, and
then in the Louvre.
Having lost the role of the residence of the king, the palace in Sit
turns into the Palace of Justice.
The name "Conciergerie" meant
either a private concierge mansion or a prison at the judiciary. Leaving
the palace, the king entrusted his protection to the concierge. Such an
important position could only be held by very influential persons of
high rank, among whom was Queen Isabella of Bavaria. Under the
Conciergerie, there was a prison room inside the palace walls at all
times. At the end of the 14th century, when the neighboring prison at
Châtelet became overcrowded, some of the prisoners were transferred to
the cells of the palace. In 1391 the building became an official prison.
It contained political prisoners, swindlers, and murderers.
After
the verdict was passed, the convicts were taken to the place of
execution, to the Place de Greve (now Place Hotel de Ville), turning on
the way to Notre Dame, where public repentance was to be heard on the
porch.
The conditions in which the criminals lived depended
entirely on their wealth, status and connections. The wealthy and
important sat in solitary confinement with a bed and a table, they were
allowed to read and write. The less wealthy could pay for a cell with
very simple furniture: a hard bunk and maybe even a table. Such chambers
were called pistoles (a pistol is any old European gold coin). The
poorest slept on hay in damp, dark conditions, and vermin swarmed on
walls and floors. Such kennels were called "oubliettes" (fr. Godforsaken
place). Under these conditions, people did not live long, they
themselves died from diseases.
Three towers of the Conciergerie
have survived from medieval times: Caesar, named after the Roman
emperor; the Silver Tower, which kept the royal treasures; and Bonbec
(fr. Bonbec - “good beak”), which received this name due to the fact
that there were torture chambers in it and the “singing” of the victims
could be heard from there.
Numerous fires hit the palace. The
fire of 1618 turned out to be the most devastating, when huge premises
were destroyed in one night, all the stucco, all the sculptures, the
painting of the plafonds of the Hall of Lost Steps, and many documents
were destroyed. In 1630, the Sainte-Chapelle was engulfed in flames, and
it was miraculously saved. The royal chambers, the gallery de Mercier,
the Great entrance to the Powerful tower, the gallery of merchants,
which was once the busiest place in Paris, were destroyed by a fire in
1776. The reconstruction was entrusted to the architects Jacques Denis
Antoine, Guillaume Martin Couture and Demaison. They demolished the
Treasury of the Charters, the eastern wall of the palace, the Montgomery
tower and built the modern facade of the Palace of Justice, the
Sainte-Chapelle gallery, new prison cells, the Conciergerie chapel on
the site of a 12th-century chapel.
On the eve of the Revolution,
the struggle for power between Parliament and King Louis XVI began to
look like a theatrical performance. On May 5, 1788, the parliamentarians
locked themselves in the palace, refusing to hand over two people whom
Louis XVI had sent for. In 1789, the Constituent Assembly (Constituent
Assembly) decided to dissolve the parliament for an indefinite period.
In 1790, Jean Sylvain Bailly, mayor of Paris, sealed the doors of the
palace. In 1792 the monarchy fell. The revolutionary tribunal,
established in March 1793, was located in the Great Royal Chambers. In
July, Robespierre joined the Committee of Public Salvation with a
program based on virtue and terror. The "Law on Suspicious" ordered the
arrest of all enemies of the Revolution who admitted their guilt or were
only suspected of anti-revolutionary views.
From 1793 to 1794,
more than 2,700 people appeared before Fouquier-Tinville, public
prosecutor of the Tribunal, among whom were Queen Marie Antoinette and
Robespierre. In 1794, witnesses and defenders were abolished; every day,
several dozen prisoners were sent to the guillotine. The tribunal was
dissolved in May 1795 after the fall of Robespierre.
By an evil irony of fate, one of the first prisoners of the
Conciergerie was Enguerrand de Marigny (the one to whom Philip the
Handsome commissioned the construction of a new palace). Under the heir
Louis X the Quarrelsome, he fell out of favor and was executed in 1314.
Count Gabriel de Montgomery, who mortally wounded Henry II, ended up
in the Conciergerie a few years later for joining the Reformation
movement and opposing Charles IX. Executed in 1574.
Religious
fanatic Francois Ravaillac went to prison two days after the
assassination of Henry IV, he was tortured with "boots" - stocks. After
the trial, he was subjected to public torture, and then quartered with
the help of four horses.
The famous poisoner Marie-Madeleine
d'Aubrey, the Marquise de Brainvilliers, was tortured with water in 1676
and beheaded in the Place de Greve.
The desperate robber
Kartouche sat in the Montgomery Tower, withstood torture with boots, but
before being broken on the wheel betrayed his accomplices, including
from the nobility. He was beheaded in 1721.
Robert-Francois
Damien endured terrible torture during the quartering for the attempted
murder of Louis XV.
After the trial, the Countess de Lamotte was
burnt out with a red-hot iron “V” (French voleur - thief), publicly
punished with rods and sent to the Salpêtrière prison, from where she
escaped.
It was here that Marie Antoinette was imprisoned before
her execution.
The Conciergerie had a reputation for being the
harshest prison. During the revolutionary Terror, the cells held several
hundred prisoners, who were kept in terrible conditions. Until 1794,
"suspicious" prisoners were kept in the same cells as those convicted of
ordinary criminal offenses. After the announcement of the verdict, those
sentenced to death could have a final feast.
In 1868, the modern
building of the Palace of Justice was built, where the French judicial
institutions are still located.
Trials in France are public and often attract large audiences. The
loudest trials in the Palace of Justice:
1880 Sarah Bernhardt is
tried for breaking her life contract with the Comédie Francaise;
1893
- Panama scandal;
1898 - political trial of Emile Zola for his famous
pamphlet "I accuse";
1906 - the condemnation of Dreyfus;
1917 -
accused of espionage and sentenced to death dancer and spy Mata Hari;
1932 - Russian emigrant Pavel Gorgulov was sentenced to death for the
assassination of French President Paul Doumer;
1945 - the trial of
Marshal Pétain for collaborationism.