page_title: Paris in the 17th century
section_title: Water
hierarchical_section_title: Paris in the 17th century / Daily life / Water
caption_attribution_description: English: The water carrier in the court of France in 1675. Recueil des modes de la cour de France, 'Le Porteur d'Eau'
context_page_description: Paris in the 17th century was the largest city in Europe, with a population of half a million, matched in size only by London. It was ruled in turn by three monarchs; Henry IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV, and saw the building of some of the city's most famous parks and monuments, including the Pont Neuf, the Palais Royal, the newly joined Louvre and Tuileries Palace, the Place des Vosges, and the Luxembourg Garden. It was also a flourishing center of French science and the arts; it saw the founding of the Paris Observatory, the French Academy of Sciences and the first botanical garden in Paris, which also became the first park in Paris open to the public. The first permanent theater opened, the Comédie-Française was founded, and the first French opera and French ballets had their premieres. Paris became the home of the new Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and of some of France's most famous writers, including Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, La Fontaine and Moliere. Urban innovations for the city included the first street lighting, the first public transport, the first building code, and the first new aqueduct since Roman times.
context_section_description: In the 17th century the drinking water of Paris came mostly from Seine, despite pollution of the river from the nearby tanneries and butcher shops. In the 18th century, taking drinking water from the river in the center of the city was finally banned.  Some water also came from outside the city, from springs and reservoirs in Belleville, the Pré Saint-Gervais and La Vilette, carried in aqueducts built by the monks to the monasteries on the right bank.  These also provided water to the palaces of the Louvre and the Tuileries, which together consumed about half the water supply of Paris.
  In 1607, Henry IV decided to build a large pump on the Seine next to the Louvre to increase the water supply for the palaces.  The pump was located on the second arch of the Pont Neuf, in a high building decorated with a bas-relief of Jesus and the Samaritan at the wells of Jacob, which gave the pump the popular name of Samaritaine.  The pump was finished in October 1608. The water was lifted by a wheel with eight buckets.  it was supposed to lift 480,000 liters of water a day, but, because of numerous breakdowns, it only provided 20,000 liters a day, used by the neighboring palaces and gardens.
  In 1670, the city contracted with the engineer in charge of the Samaritaine to build a second pump on the pont Notre-Dame, then, in the same year on the same bridge, a third pump.  The two new pumps went into service in 1673.  A series of wheels lifted the water up to the top of a tall square tower, where it was transferred to pipes and flowed by gravity to the palaces. The new pumps were able to provide two million liters a day.
  
  Marie de' Medici needed abundant water for her new palace and gardens on the left bank, which had few sources of water.   Recalling that the ancient Romans had built an aqueduct from Rungis to their baths on the left bank, Sully, the minister of public works, sent engineers to find the route of the old aqueduct.  A new aqueduct thirteen kilometers long was constructed 1613 and 1623, ending near the present-day Observatory, bringing 240,000 liters of water a day, enough for the dowager Queen's gardens and fountains.   It enabled her to construct one of the best-known fountains in Paris today, the Medici Fountain, a reminder of her childhood in the Pitti Palace in Florence, in the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace.
  For those outside the palaces and monasteries, and the homes of nobles who had their own wells, the water came from the fountains of Paris.  The first public fountain had been built in 1183  by King Philip Augustus at Les Halles, the central market, and a second, the Fontaine des Innocents was built in the 13th century.  By the beginning of the 17th century there were a dozen fountains functioning within the center of the city.   Between 1624 and 1628 Louis XIII built thirteen new fountains, providing water and decoration on the Parvis of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, on the Place de Greve, Place Maubert, Saint Severin, Place Royale, rue de Buci, porte Saint Michel, and other central points.
  The water was transported from the fountains to the residences of the Parisians by domestic servants or by water bearers, who, for a charge, carried it in two covered wooden buckets attached to a strap over his shoulders and to a frame.   There were frequent disputes between water-bearers and domestic servants all trying to get water from the fountains.  Frequently the water-bearers skipped the lines at the fountains and simply took the water from the Seine.
caption: A water-bearer (1675)
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