Subway: Chatelet, Cite
Tel. 01-5340 6080
Open: daily
Closed: Jan 1, May 1, Dec 25
Ile de La Cite is a boat shaped island on the Seine river that flows through Paris. It is the historic nucleus of ancient Paris. Parisii Celtic tribe that settled Ile de La Cite in the 3rd century BC gave the name to French capital. Romans who conquered these lands in the 1st century BC under Julius Caesar expanded the settlement and constructed their structures. Later Germanic tribe of the Franks and the Capetian kings expanded their presence even further. If you are interested in the earliest human presence on Ile de La Cite you can visit Crypte Archeologique that houses remains of ancient and medieval structures. Every day Ile de la Cite is the centre of Marche aux Fleurs de Oiseaux that is held on the Place Louis Lepine. It is the most famous flower market in Paris. On Sundays locals also sell caged singing birds here.
For a long time it was thought that a small Gallic
tribe called the Parisii lived on the island Ile de La Cite from 250
BC. The area was rich in fishing and hunting and the access from one
side of the Seine to the other was easier thanks to the narrowness
of the river. Two wooden footbridges extended the natural
north-south road, which descended from Mount La Chapelle and went to
the hill of Santa Genoveva, thus avoiding the many marshes around.
In 52 BC, at the time of the struggle between Vercingetorix and
Julius Caesar, the parisii lived effectively in the vicinity of the
island.
But today, historians are more inclined to other hypotheses. Indeed,
the parisii could have perfectly settled farther away, at the mouth
of the Bièvre River (tributary of the Seine), or on another island
now disappeared, even on the peninsula formed by the mouth of the
Bièvre, on the left bank of the river (rive gauche). All this area
of Paris was flooded or swampy, like the area later called Le
Marais ('The Marsh'), and the island itself was completely flooded
in the late 1197.
The name "city" refers to the fortified limits of Paris as they were
at the end of Antiquity, reduced to a single island, and which were the
urban core of the medieval city.
It is the same phenomenon which
occurred in London where the district of the City represents the ancient
limits. In both cases there is only the very first city center that was
ever anything other than “the city”, all the other districts are
additions. And so it is that in London, as in Paris, the name of the
“city” and its geographical limits bear witness to the most remote past
of the city.
In Paris, the island is designated as a district
within the city for the first time around 954, when the first division
of the city into districts is made after an expansion on the right bank.
The island is defined there as the “district of the City”. At that time,
the synonym "city" was not yet commonly used. This district will keep
the same name and the same borders until the Revolution.
The
island also had the name of "Island of the Palace", it was still used a
little in the 19th century.
Perhaps the cradle of Paris
Until the course of the 20th century,
historians generally believed that a small Gallic tribe called the
Parisii had lived there since 250 BC. The region was rich in fish and
game and access from one bank to the other of the Seine was facilitated
by the relative narrowness of the river. Two wooden footbridges extended
the natural north-south road which descended from the Col de La Chapelle
to head towards the Sainte-Geneviève mountain, thus avoiding the many
surrounding marshes. An enclosure could have been built to protect the
few straw huts that housed the population from enemy attacks.
Today, due to the absence of conclusive archaeological elements, no
Gallic vestige, nor trace of occupation prior to the Roman conquest
having been discovered on the island, historians and contemporary
archaeologists consider it more probable that the Settlement of the
Parisii agglomeration outside the Ile de la Cité, at the mouth of the
Bièvre, on another island that no longer exists today or near Nanterre.
A Gallic agglomeration was indeed discovered there in 2003, but its
existence does not seem incompatible with that of a settlement on the
Ile de la Cité. Despite the fact that the island has been built and
rebuilt in every nook and cranny for centuries, harming the preservation
of the remains, a campaign of archaeological excavations led by
Professor Wenceslas Kruta in 1976 and 1977 revealed, below the level
Gallo-Roman, an older level, unspectacular but real (nails, post holes,
remains of rubbish pits).
The Ile de la Cité extended over 9 ha,
whereas today its total area is 22.5 ha. The bank was set back about
fifty meters from the current banks, due to the irregularity of the
river and the instability of the banks. In addition, several small
islets were not added to the island until later.
In 52 BC., after
the victory of Julius Caesar over Vercingetorix, we witnessed the birth
of Lutèce. The Gauls settled on the island and continued to live off the
river, through fishing and shipping, while the Gallo-Roman city was
built on the left bank.
At the beginning of our era, there was a temple dedicated to the
glory of Jupiter on the island, probably built by the nauts, a wealthy
corporation of navigators. Downstream of the island was also built a
palace where the representative of Rome resided. The banks were
stabilized and certain benches were joined to the island in order to
allow a better layout of the streets three meters wide, bordered by
Roman-style houses, on one floor, in half-timbered and cob, with a roof
of tiles or thatch. The cardo maximus crossed the island at the location
of the current rue de la Cité, thus taking up the old Gallic road, but
with a real gravel, made of pebbles and clay and covered with sandstone
slabs. On this axis, the walkways gave way to two wooden bridges on
stilts. The population is estimated at around 1,500. The quay of the
port of Lutèce, established in the south-east of the island, was built
during the reign of Tiberius, at the beginning of the 1st century.
After the splendor of the period of the High Empire, the first
invasions of the Barbarians, from 276, forced the inhabitants of Lutèce
to take refuge regularly on the island of the City, easier to defend,
while the enemy hordes ravaged the Upper -Lutetia. During a wave of Huns
led by Attila, the population of the left bank, galvanized by Saint
Geneviève, flowed back to the island and in the middle of the 4th
century, an enclosure two meters wide was built at a distance of about
thirty meters from the banks of the Seine. In the axis of the cardo were
pierced two large doors ten meters wide made up of two wooden doors. On
the western part, the Palace became in 357 the military residence of
Caesar Julien who had taken up residence in Lutèce. Opposite stood a
large civil basilica 70 meters long by 35 wide, on the site of the
current flower market.
In 508, Clovis, King of the Franks, made
Paris the capital of his kingdom and settled in the Palace of the former
Roman government. With Christianity, churches multiplied on the island.
The former Gallo-Roman temple was replaced between 511 and 558 by a
large Christian basilica dedicated to Saint Stephen, Saint-Etienne
Cathedral in Paris, on the site of the current Notre-Dame de Paris
Cathedral, one of masterpieces of Gothic architecture. The Gallo-Roman
enclosure was leveled at this place in order to proceed with its
construction, according to the plans of the Constantinian basilicas,
erecting its marble columns and its capitals undoubtedly recovered from
the old temple of the Nautes. The Saint-Jean-le-Rond baptistery and the
Saint-Germain-le-Vieux basilica were also erected. Two female
monasteries were built, Saint-Christophe Abbey and Saint-Martial Abbey,
as well as a wooden oratory dedicated to Saint Martin. A violent fire,
in 586, devastated all the commercial district which extended from the
palace to the churches of the south-eastern part. Even the prison near
the Petit-Pont was destroyed, allowing the prisoners to escape.
During the Carolingian period, from 752 to 987, the life of the
capital was concentrated on the island. But from Charlemagne, the City
lost its statute of capital, the court moving from city to city. Looted,
burned and devastated by the Normans three times, in 845, 856-857 and
861, it was weakened. Charles the Bald, in 877, ordered the restoration
and reinforcement of the Gallo-Roman enclosure. Two large towers, the
Petit and the Grand Châtelet, were also built to protect access to the
bridges, the piers of which were tightened to better control the passage
of boats. The abbeys of the two banks had built chapels on the island,
in order to shelter their treasure there: thus were erected
Saint-Germain-le-Vieux, Sainte-Geneviève-la-Petite, Saint
-Landry-des-Arcis and, in the following century, Saint-Barthélemy.
When seven hundred longships and forty thousand Vikings, led by
Sigfried, presented themselves on the western shore of the Ile de la
Cité, Gozlin, Bishop of Paris, refused them passage. A long siege ensued
which resulted in the departure of the invaders against the payment of a
tribute. Apart from the City, which suffered from these long months of
siege, everything was destroyed and devastated on both banks. The Count
of Paris, Eudes I of France benefited from this relative victory of the
Parisians and was elected King of West Francia, replacing Charles the
Fat, accused of having been slow to protect the city.
While the
last Carolingians lived mainly in the Oise or Aisne valleys, the
Robertians, established in the Loire valley, moved closer to Paris. The
Ile de la Cité became the seat of power: to the west, the count's palace
became a royal residence, even if Hugues Capet rarely occupied it. His
successors, for their part, made important modifications. The eastern
part was dedicated to episcopal power. Between the two, the commercial
district, around the Palu market, supplied the king and the bishop with
precious products15, but the population spread out above all on the
right bank, which was called “beyond Grand-Pont”.
In the 11th
century, the City was just a vast construction site, but in 1112, King
Louis VI the Fat moved into the Palace of the City, with its court and
the Parliament, the Curia Regis. On the piers of the Grand-Pont was
built the Pont aux Meuniers, consisting of a row of mills, which was
doubled in 1142 by the Pont-aux-Changeurs, which then in turn took the
name of Grand-Pont. To the south, the Petit-Pont was also lined with
houses and businesses. The former vulnerability of the island was
greatly diminished when Philippe Auguste, born and married in the Palais
de la Cité, had an enclosure built on both banks of the Seine at the
turn of the 13th century, which completely enclosed the Cité. In 1163,
Bishop Maurice de Sully had launched the construction of Notre-Dame
Cathedral at the same time as he was reforming the organization of the
parishes around twelve chapels which stood on the island, in order to
establish the episcopal authority.
Around 1300, the rhymer Guillot de Paris composed a first list of
street names in Paris in Le Dit des rue de Paris. This document
indicates that the capital had 310 streets, including 80 in the
Outre-Petit-Pont district (left bank), 36 in “la Cité” and 114 in the
Outre-Grand-Pont district (right bank).
After several expansions
initiated by Saint Louis and Philippe Le Bel, the Palais de la Cité was
abandoned, on the decision of Charles V, by the royal family who settled
in the Louvre. The Ile de la Cité then had five hundred houses,
separated by a maze of about forty unsanitary streets, only the four
main thoroughfares being paved since the reign of Philippe Auguste. The
Pont-aux-Changeurs housed a hundred traders; on its axis, towards the
south, the Saint-Michel bridge was built in stone from 1379, while the
Notre-Dame bridge replaced, in 1413, the old footbridge called "planks
Milbray", which had succeeded the Grand-Pont gallo- Roman. Access by
river was regulated by the presence of heavy chains that extended the
city walls above the water.
Charles VII definitively left the
palace to the Parliament. Few changes occurred on the Ile de la Cité
during the centuries that followed.
It became in the sixteenth
century one of the sixteen administrative districts. In 1578, Henri III
decided to build the Pont Neuf to connect the two banks via the
downstream point of the City. The island was then to cease to be the
obligatory passage between the two shores and its development and its
transformation were slowed down. Henri IV completed the work in 1607 and
entrusted the President of the Parliament of Paris, Achille de Harlay,
with the task of building a commercial space around the future Place
Dauphine, after having united the islets of Gourdaine to the Ile de la
Cité, the Passeur-aux-Vaches and the Jews. The statue of Henri IV was
erected in 1614. Part of the Palace was also rebuilt, devastated by a
fire in 1618. The Change bridge was rebuilt by Michel Villedo and Jean
Androuet du Cerceau, between 1639 and 1647, with two rows of houses .
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Ile de la Cité was mainly
subject to new town planning rules, rectifying the alignment of the
buildings, imposing a rectilinear layout and modifying the materials and
appearance of the facades. On the eve of the Revolution, there were
still ten parishes out of the previous fourteen.
During the
Revolution, the island was called Île-de-la-Fraternité, Island of
Brotherhood.
After the violent floods in the winter of 1801-1802,
it was decided to surround the entire Île de la Cité with quays. The rue
de Constantine was pierced under Louis-Philippe, as was the rue d'Arcole
which extended the new bridge of Arcole, replacing a few narrow and
muddy streets.
Many projects were developed in the middle of the 19th century to
restore the central role of its origins to the Ile de la Cité. A
Fourierist who called himself Perreymond, in his Studies on the City of
Paris, was one of the first to suggest a vast program of reconstruction
of the island in order to make it the religious and cultural center of
the capital, envisaging the construction of an opera house and a large
library. Viollet-le-Duc planned the construction of a large episcopal
palace near the cathedral. He had to content himself with rebuilding the
sacristy of Notre-Dame.
But it was above all the work decided on
by Baron Haussmann that brought the greatest change to the Ile de la
Cité since the Middle Ages: the entire part between the courthouse and
Notre-Dame cathedral was razed, as well as east of the bedside. Hundreds
of houses and many small churches disappeared. Only two sections of
Place Dauphine and the Notre-Dame cloister escaped demolition. 25,000
people were expelled. The barracks of the City, which became the police
headquarters, and the commercial court were built on the site left free.
The wide gap in the Boulevard du Palais supplanted the winding Rue de la
Barillerie; the Rue de la Cité absorbed the old Rues du Marché-Palu, de
la Juiverie, and de la Vieille-Lanterne; rue de Lutèce replaced rue de
Constantine. The forecourt of Notre-Dame was enlarged six times the area
it occupied in the Middle Ages, by the demolition of the Hôtel-Dieu,
which was rebuilt between 1868 and 1875 further north, and the removal
of the canonical houses and the twenty sanctuaries that surrounded the
cathedral according to medieval tradition. The buildings in the rue
d'Arcole, which were only twenty years old, were even destroyed. These
radical transformations aroused strong protests because of the pure and
simple disappearance of the historic heart of Paris and its millennial
history and are currently deplored. The only parts spared by the town
planning operations of the Second Empire are the former canonical
quarter between the cathedral, the Seine and the rue d'Arcole, the
destruction of which had also been programmed by Haussmann, and two
sides of the triangle of the place Dauphine .
In December 2016,
in a report submitted to the President of the Republic François
Hollande, the President of the Center des Monuments Nationaux Philippe
Bélaval and the architect Dominique Perrault propose to strengthen the
cultural and tourist attractiveness of the Ile de la Cité. Thus, within
this framework, promenades and pedestrian bridges would be created. The
Cour du Mai and the gallery of the Palais de Justice, after the
departure of the court from the Cité Judiciaire, would become a major
public hub, linking the Conciergerie and the Sainte-Chapelle. Courtyards
of the Hôtel-Dieu, the police headquarters and the Palais de Justice
would be covered by glass roofs, like the Louvre palace.
The Ile de la Cité is surrounded by two arms of the Seine: the Grand bras to the north and the Petit bras to the south. Its oblong shape is reminiscent of a cradle, as Victor Hugo pointed out in Notre-Dame de Paris. From prehistoric times, the width of these two arms was the smallest, the bed of the river being reduced by the presence of the Sainte-Geneviève mountain to the south and the Saint-Merri and Saint-Gervais heaps to the north. In addition, a seven-meter high bank cut into the limestone platform bounded the river on its right bank, to the northwest of the island. This particular geography participated in the development of the island by promoting communication with both banks of the river. Thanks to the successive developments made since the first human settlements and the accumulation of embankments, the island is now eight meters higher than the level then, which can still be seen at the tip of the current square. of the Vert-Galant. This artificial sedimentation made it possible to protect the island from the floods of the Seine.
Nowadays, the Seine is crossed using nine bridges, which replaced the
two simple wooden footbridges that existed in antiquity.
If they
fulfilled a defensive function at the time of the great invasions, the
bridges were also above all an essential vector of circulation and
commercial exchanges at the base of the development of the City and the
whole city. In Gallo-Roman and then Merovingian times, the Seine was
crossed by the “Grand-Pont” (now Notre-Dame bridge) and the
“Petit-Pont”, both aligned on the axis of the cardo maximus.
Built of wood, often hastily and without real control of the work, they
are regularly destroyed during floods, fires or enemy attacks. At the
end of the Middle Ages, there are five bridges, lined with houses and
very crowded. At the same time, ferries ensure the transport, from one
bank to the other, of men and goods.
Of these nine bridges:
Only the Pont Neuf crosses the two arms (the Large arm and the Small
arm), making it possible to connect the right bank to the left bank via
the western tip of the island;
Three works connect the island to
the right bank by crossing the Grand bras:
Change Bridge,
Notre
Dame Bridge,
Arcole bridge.
Four bridges connect the island to
the left bank by crossing the Petit bras:
the Saint-Michel bridge,
the Petit-Pont,
the Double bridge,
the Archdiocese bridge.
Finally, only one, the Saint-Louis bridge, allows you to reach
Saint-Louis island.
Until the 19th century, the Ile de la Cité was nothing but a maze of
narrow streets built on both sides. Only the garden of the Palais de la
Cité, at the western tip, opened up a green space since the reign of
Saint Louis, until the construction of the Pont Neuf in 1578: several
tunnels of greenery comprising a cradle of trellis supported vines.
Today, the island has four green spaces: the square du Vert-Galant
on the western tip, the square de l'Île-de-France on the eastern tip,
the square de la Place-Dauphine and, around Notre -Dame, the garden of
the Place Jean-Paul-II (formerly the garden of the Place du
Parvis-Notre-Dame) and the Square Jean-XXIII (formerly the Square de
l'Archevêché), to which we can add the garden of the rue Urchins.
To these squares, four places must be added: the place du Pont-Neuf,
the place Dauphine (behind the courthouse), the "parvis Notre-Dame -
place Jean-Paul-II" (formerly the place du Parvis-Notre- Dame), and
Place Louis-Lépine where the flower and bird market is located.
The current roads, streets, squares and quays of the Ile de la Cité
are few in number compared to the high number of narrow and muddy alleys
that existed from the Middle Ages until the middle of the 19th century.
From about twenty today, their number was forty-three in 1300.
Docks
The quays of the island are divided into six sections:
to
the north, the quays of the Clock, of Corsica, and of the Flowers,
to
the south, the Orfèvres and Marché-Neuf quays,
to the east, the Quai
de l'Archevêché.
lanes
In addition to the Allée
Célestin-Hennion, the Boulevard du Palais and the Promenade
Maurice-Carême, the island also includes a dozen streets:
Rue
Henri-Robert (between Place du Pont-Neuf and Place Dauphine)
rue de
Harlay (behind the courthouse)
rue de Lutece
city street
the
rue d'Arcole
rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame
Massillon Street
Chanoiness street
Dove Street
Rue des Ursins
the street of
singers
Two buildings from the medieval period are vestiges of the “palace of
the City”:
the prison of the Conciergerie
the Sainte-Chapelle of
Louis IX (dating from 1245).
You can also find there:
the Notre-Dame cathedral
The
police headquarters
courthouse
the Hotel-Dieu
the commercial
court
the Memorial of the Martyrs of the Deportation, built from 1954
to 1964 by the architect Georges-Henri Pingusson
Administratively, Boulevard du Palais delimits the border between the
1st arrondissement (or "arrondissement du Louvre", to the west) and the
4th arrondissement (or "arrondissement de l'Hôtel-de-Ville", to the
East). The part belonging to the 1st arrondissement belongs to the 1st
district of Paris or Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois district; that of the 4th
arrondissement forms with the Ile Saint-Louis the 16th Parisian district
or Notre-Dame district. This administrative peculiarity does not date
from the creation of the twenty arrondissements of Paris in 1859, but
from the French Revolution or, more precisely, from the convocation to
the Estates General of 1789.
The Cité district, a legacy of
ancient Lutetia, is one of the first four administrative divisions of
the city, even if its origin is uncertain, along with
Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, Verrerie and Grève, whose mention appears as
early as the twelfth century. In the Middle Ages there were no real
communal divisions, largely supplanted by the parish framework. However,
the insecurity that reigned in the fourteenth century encouraged the
provost of the merchants to fix the framework of the districts, with its
fifties and its tens. At the beginning of the 15th century, the district
of the Cité was the first of the sixteen districts of the city within
the walls of Charles V and took the name of "Notre-Dame". When the
district resumed the name of "La Cité" during the municipal reform of
1680, it was extended to the eastern tip of Louviers Island, thereby
including Saint-Louis Island, only built since the 1640.
The
ordinance of Louis XIV of December 12, 1702 which divides Paris into
twenty districts does not modify the denomination and the limits of the
district of the City. On the occasion of the Estates General of 1789,
Paris was divided into sixty districts: the island was then for the
first time divided in two administratively; the Barnabites district
covers the part to the west of the axis of the rue de la Lanterne, de la
Juiverie and du Marché-Palu, and the district of Notre-Dame, the part to
the east. Île Saint-Louis therefore represents a separate district.
This division was modified the following year, with the creation, on
June 27, 1790, of the 48 revolutionary sections of Paris. The Notre-Dame
section covers the part of the island east of rue de la Barillerie; it
meets in the chapter house of Notre-Dame. It changed its name several
times, in particular in 1793 when dechristianization gave it the title
of Section de la Raison for a few days. The western part of the island
is covered by the Henri-IV section, which also bears several names, in
this case the Pont-Neuf section or the Revolutionary section.
The
creation on October 11, 1795 of the twelve arrondissements maintains
this division in two of the Ile de la Cité between the 9th (extending
mainly on the right bank) and the 11th (mostly on the left bank).
However, unlike the current administrative districts which extend beyond
the natural limits of the Seine, those of 1795 respect the unity of the
island: the western part is the district of the Palais de justice, the
east is the district of the City.