page_title: Paris in the 17th century
section_title: The city grows
hierarchical_section_title: Paris in the 17th century / The city grows
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Gravure d'Adam Pérelle (1638-1695) - La Porte Saint-Bernard, publiée par Nicolas Langlois (1640-1703)- Dimensions originales 17,9 x 27,4 cm - Topo. P.C. 75 F.
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: Paris in 1610 was roughly round,   about five hundred hectares in area, and was divided by the Seine.  It was possible to walk at a brisk pace from the north end of the city to the south, a distance of about three kilometers,  in about half an hour.
  There were two main north-south streets through the city; one from Porte Saint Martin to Porte Saint-Jacques, which crossed the Seine on the Pont Notre-Dame, and a second wide street from Porte Saint-Denis to the Porte Saint-Michel, crossing the Pont au Change and the Pont Saint-Michel.   There was a single main east-west axis, beginning at the Bastille in the east and ending at Porte Saint-Honoré in the west, via the rue Saint Antoine, rue des Balais, rue Roi-de-Sicilie, rue de la Verrerie, rue des Lombards, rue de la Ferronnerie, and finally rue Saint-Honoré.
  Between the main streets in the center of the city was a maze of narrow, winding streets, between wooden houses four or five stories high, dark at night and crowded and noisy during the day.  At night, many of the streets were closed with large chains, kept in drums at the corners.  They were dimly lit by a small number of oil lamps.
  The royal residence was usually either the Louvre or the Château of Vincennes, just east of the city.  The courts and royal administrative offices were in the old palace on the île de la Cité. The offices of the Provost of Paris, the King's governor, were in the Châtelet fortress, which also served as a prison. The city administration, run by the Provost of the Merchants, was in the Hôtel de Ville.   The commercial center of the city was the river port, located mostly on the right bank between the Place de Greve and the Quai Saint Paul, not far from les Halles, the central market of the city.  The colleges of the University occupied buildings on the side of Mount Saint-Genevieve, on the left bank.
  On the right bank Paris was bordered by the wall begun in 1566 by Charles V, and later finished by Louis XIII in 1635. The wall was four meters high and two meters thick, and was reinforced by fourteen bastions ranging in size from 30 to 290 meters, and by a moat 25 to 30 meters wide, which was always kept full of water.  Access to the city was by fourteen gates, each of which had a drawbridge over the moat.  The gates were closed at night, usually between seven in the evening and five in the morning, with the schedule changing depending upon the season.  The left bank did not have any recent fortifications;  it was still protected by the old wall of King Philip Augustus.
  The city wall did not mark the real edge of the city;  there were some rural areas, with gardens and orchards, inside the walls, and there were many buildings and houses outside.  Outside the walls there were a number of faubourgs, or suburbs;  on the left bank,  the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés was a virtual town, with its own fair and farms.  The Faubourg of Saint-Jacques also on the left bank, was largely occupied by monasteries.  The Faubourg Saint-Victor and Faubourg Saint-Marcel were crowded and growing. On the right bank were the Faubourgs of Saint-Honoré, Montmartre, Saint-Denis, du Temple, and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, filled with artisans and workshops.
  The edges of the growing city were not clearly defined until 1638, when the royal government drew a new line, which included the Faubourgs on both the right and left banks.  On the left bank it reached south as far as the site of the future observatory, and included the all the area of the modern fifth and sixth arrondissements. On the right bank, the new boundary followed the line of new fortifications constructed by Louis XIII, along the modern boulevards de la Madeleine, des Capucines, des Italiens, Montmartre and Poissonniere.
  In 1670, Louis XIV declared that France was safe from attack and the walls were no longer necessary, and they were gradually replaced by boulevards lined by trees. The area of the city approximately doubled from what it had been early in the century, from 500 to about 1100 hectares.  In 1674, the administrators marked the border more prec
caption: Porte Saint-Bernard, by Adam Perelle (c. 1680)
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