Paris - The City of Culture

Paris. City of culture. Shining jewel of Europe. Home to a sway of the greatest artists and minds of the century.

Located in the North of France, it is the largest and most populous city in Europe, with a citizenship count of half a million, matched only by London in England. It has seen 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 is also a flourishing center of French science and the arts; it has seen the founding of the Paris Observatory, the French Academy of Sciences and the first botanical garden in Paris, which has also become 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 has become 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 include the first street lighting, the first public transport, the first building code, and the first new aqueduct since Roman times.

### **17th Century Paris**

Louis XIII was a few months short of his ninth birthday on the 14th May 1610 when his father, Henry IV was assassinated by François Ravaillac, a Catholic zealot who took advantage of a traffic congestion during the Queen's coronation ceremony and stabbed him and several others in his entourage to death.

Louis's mother, Marie de' Medici, became Regent following the assassination and ruled France in his name, while in actuality, relishing in her newfound power. She retained several of the ministers of her late husband, but dismissed the most talented, filling the royal council instead with nobles and sycophants from her native Florence, including Concino Concini, who she made head of the royal council. Concini was the husband of the most valued of her ladies in waiting, Leonora Dori. Leonora was not only a long standing friend and confidant of the Queen, but also served her in more arcane means. Marie de' Medici was a famously superstitious woman, and required what she thought were regular exorcisms and white magic protection rituals from her closest associate. Whereas in fact, Leonora Dori was an agent of the Dark Eye, a powerful group of dragons set on conquering France, having already infiltrated and established themselves in the Queen's homeland of Italy. Her role was to over time, seduce the Queen into relinquishing her power in favour of a new dynasty; a lineage of dragons.

Louis XIII entered his fourteenth year in 1614, and although officially an adult, his mother and her favorite, Concini, refused to allow him to lead the Royal Council. On April 24, 1617, Louis had his captain of the guards assassinate Concini at the Louvre. Concini's wife was charged with sorcery, beheaded and then burned at that stake on the Place de Greve, putting an end to her spell over the Queen and stifling the Dark Eye's plans, while Concini's followers were chased from Paris. Louis exiled his mother to the Château de Blois in the Loire Valley. Louis made his own favorite, Charles d'Albert, the Duke of Luynes, the new head of the council, and launched a new campaign to persecute the Protestants, 'sinners' in a Catholic world. The Duke of Luynes died during an unsuccessful military campaign against the Protestants in Montauban.

Marie de' Medici managed to escape from her exile in the Château de Bois, and was reconciled with her son. Louis tried several different heads of government before finally selecting the Cardinal Richelieu, a protégé of his mother, in April 1624. Richelieu quickly showed his military skills and gift for political intrigue by defeating the Protestants at La Rochelle in 1628 (with the unofficial aid of his blades) and by executing or sending into exile several high-ranking nobles who challenged his authority.

In 1630, Marie de' Medici quarreled again with Richelieu, and demanded that her son choose between Richelieu or her. For a day (known as the 'Day of the dupes') it appeared that she had won, but the next day Louis XIII invited Richelieu to the château de Vincennes and gave him his full support. Marie de' Medici was exiled once more, now to Compiegne. Richelieu turned his attention to completing and beginning new projects for the improvement of Paris. Four new bridges were built over the Seine; the Pont Marie, the Pont de la Tournelle, the Pont au Double, and the Pont Barbier. Two small islands in the Seine, the Île Notre-Dame and the Île-aux-vaches, which had been used for grazing cattle and storing firewood, were combined to make the Île Saint-Louis, which became the site of the splendid *hôtels particuliers* of Parisian financiers.

Richelieu helped introduce a new religious architectural style into Paris, inspired by the famous churches in Rome, particularly the church of the Jesuits, and the Basilica of Saint Peter. The first façade built in the Jesuit style was that of the church of Saint-Gervais in 1616; the first church entirely built in the new style was Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, in 1633.

### **Notable Locations**

**Palais-Cardinal**

The palace and personal residence of Cardinal Richelieu, constructed on order of Louis XIII as a gift for the Cardinal. The architect Jacques Lemercier began his design in 1629; completion commenced in 1633 and was completed in 1639. The gardens were begun in 1629 by Jean Le Nôtre (father of André Le Nôtre), Simon Bouchard, and Pierre I Desgots, to a design created by Jacques Boyceau.

**Palais des Tuileries**

Palais des Tuileries, the royal and imperial palace in Paris which stands on the right bank of the River Seine, directly in front of the Louvre. Originally built in the 16th century and first inhabited by Henry IV, Louis XIII made it his personal residence once he became King of France.

**The Louvre**

The Louvre palace serves as a secondary home for King Louis and other members of the royal court. Construction was begun by King Philip II in the late 12th century to protect the city from the attack from the West, as the Kingdom of England still held Normandy at the time. In the 14th century, Charles V converted the building from its military role into a residence, where the French royalty primarily resided until the construction of the Palais des Tuileries. In 1546, Francis I started its rebuilding in French Renaissance style.

**Île de la Cité**

Île de la Cité (City Island) is an island in the river Seine in the center of Paris. In the 4th century, it was the site of the fortress of the Roman governor. In 508, Clovis I, the first King of the Franks, established his palace on the island. In the 12th century, it became an important religious center, the home of Notre-Dame cathedral, and the royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, as well as the city's first hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu. It is also the site of the city's oldest surviving bridge, the Pont Neuf. As of Henry IVs reign, it is also known to some local as Île de la Éscailles (Scale Island), as the former monarch allowed the drac population of Paris to establish a residential community along the banks of the island, which came to be known at Rot Town, a neigbourhood entirely built of wood and formed of damp lanes, dark alleys, lopsided houses and shacks built on stilts which covered all but the center of the island itself and the passage to the Notre-Dame cathedral.

**Église Saint-Eustache**

Église Saint-Eustache (The Church of Saint Eustace) was originally a modest chapel was built in 1213, dedicated to Saint Agnes, a Roman martyr. Later built on and renamed in honour of Saint Eustace, a Roman general is the second century, construction first began in 1532 and was fully completed in 1632 .Situated near the site of Les Halles and rue Montorgueil, Église Saint-Eustache exemplifies a mixture of multiple architectural styles: its structure is Flamboyant Gothic while its interior decoration and other details are Renaissance and classical.

**Les Halles**

Les Halles is Paris's central and largest market. In the 11th century, a market grew up by a cemetery to the northwest of Paris in an area called the Little Fields (Champeaux). This was mainly a dry goods and money changing market. A bishop briefly took control of the market before sharing control with Louis VI in 1137. In 1183, Philip Augustus took full control of the market and built two market halls — *halles* — to protect the textiles. He also built walls around the market, including land which had recently been confiscated from exiled Jews that originally belonged to the church. When he then built walls around the city, these embraced the market, which quickly became the city's largest (and, over time, went from being at the edge of the city to at its center). Officially, it would remain a dry goods market for centuries, but food stalls soon grew up around the main buildings and by the 15th century food prices at les Halles were being cited as significant for the whole city.

**Cimetière des Saints-Innocents**

Cimetière des Saints-Innocents began as a cemetery with individual sepulchers in the 12th century, but as of the 14th century had become a site for mass graves. People are buried together in the same pit (a pit could hold about 1,500 dead at a time); only when it became full would another be opened. In the later 14th and 15th centuries, citizens constructed arched structures called charniers or charnel houses along the cemetery walls to relieve the overcrowding of the mass graves; bones from the graves were excavated and then deposited here.

**Le Châtelet**

Le Châtelet is a stronghold on the right bank of the Seine. It contains a court and a number of prisons. The original building was a wooden tower constructed by Charles the Bald in 870 to defend the then new Grand-Pont bridge (now replaced by the Pont au Change), but Louis VI built a stronger structure in stone, a *châtelet* ('small castle'), in 1130; it was called the Grand Châtelet in contrast to the Petit Châtelet built around the same time at the end of the Petit Pont, on the south bank of the Seine. By 1460 it had fallen into such disrepair that the sittings of the court were held at the Louvre, not returning to the Châtelet until it was rebuilt in 1506 and resumed its past function as a courthouse and prison.

**Abbaye Saint-Martin**

The Abbaye Saint-Martin is an influential monastery established in 8th century Paris. The oldest known structure on the site was a chapel dedicated to St. Martin of Tours, founded during the Merovingian dynasty, which appeared in a text of 710. At a date which remains unknown, a community of monks became established there around the chapel. The abbey they founded was pillaged and destroyed by Norman invaders during the late 10th century. In 1060, King Henry I of France chose to rebuild the complex of the former abbey, intending it then to be a priory of monks. Over time, the priory fell subject to the system of commendatory abbots (revenue collectors) and became the property of a number of titular priors, with the ownership of the priory currently under Cardinal Richelieu.

**Enclos Du Temple**

The Knights Templar began in the 12th century, first constructing a fort in Le Marais. In the 13th century, a new fortress was built as their European headquarters. The enclosure, called Enclos du Temple, originally featured a number of buildings important to the running of The Order, and included a church and a massive turreted keep known as Grosse Tour (great tower) that housed a number of prized possessions of The Order, and a smaller tower called Tour de César (Caesar's Tower). The tower stands today but has been largely abandoned since the disintegration of the Knights Templar in the 13th century.

**Place Royale**

Place Royale was built originally by Henri IV and carried on after his death, from 1605 to 1612. A true square (140 m × 140 m), it embodies one of the first European programs of royal city planning (The Plaza Mayor in Madrid, begun in 1590, precedes it). It was built on the site of the Hôtel des Tournelles and its gardens. The square is often the place for the nobility to chat, and served as a meeting place for them.

**La Bastille**

La Bastille is Paris's greatest fortress and prison, known formally as the Bastille Saint-Antoine. he castle was built to defend the eastern approach to the city from potential English attacks during the Hundred Years' War. Construction was underway by 1357, but the main construction occurred from 1370 onwards, creating a strong fortress with eight towers that protected the strategic gateway of the Porte Saint-Antoine heading out to the east. The innovative design proved influential in both France and England and was widely copied. While there are several prisons in Paris, La Bastille holds the most important and dangerous criminals.

**Arsenal**

Arsenal is the name of the boat basin which begins at La Bastille and joins onto the Seine, as well as the name of the local neigbourhood in which La Bastille is located.

**Pont-Neuf**

The Pont-Neuf (New Bridge) is the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine, built by Henry III in 1579. It stands by the western (downstream) point of the Île de la Cité, the island in the middle of the river that was, between 250 and 225 BC, the birthplace of Paris, then known as Lutetia and, during the medieval period, the heart of the city.

**Place Dauphine**

The Place Dauphine is a public square located near the western end of the Île de la Cité in the first arrondissement of Paris. It was initiated by Henry IV in 1607, the second of his projects for public squares in Paris, the first being the Place Royale. He named it for his son, the Dauphin of France and future Louis XIII, who had been born in 1601. From the square, actually triangular in shape, one can access the middle of the Pont Neuf, a bridge which connects the left and right banks of the Seine by passing over the Île de la Cité.

**Hôtel-Dieu**

The Hôtel-Dieu was Paris's only hospital till recently and stands on the banks of the Seine on the southern side of the Île de la Cité. Tradition has it that the hospital was founded by Saint Landry in 651 AD, but the first official records date it to 829, making it the oldest in France and possibly the oldest continuously operating hospital in the known world.

**Notre-Dame**

Notre-Dame de Paris (Our Lady of Paris), referred to simply as Notre-Dame, is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité, The cathedral is one of the most widely recognized symbols of the city of Paris and the French nation. Construction of the cathedral began in 1163 under Bishop Maurice de Sully and was largely completed by 1260, though it has been modified frequently in the centuries that followed.

**Hôpital de la Charité**

In 1606, Marie de Médicis invited the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God to come to France. The Abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés granted them the use of its former Saint-Père chapel, which they repaired. They were later given the chapel and its attached cemetery outright, transforming it into an infirmary. In 1613, work started on the construction of major hospital structures. The old chapel was demolished and a new one was established in July 1621 by the Archbishop of Embrun, named the Hôpital de la Charité.

**Abbaye Saint-Germain-des-Prés**

The Abbaye Saint-Germain-des-Prés is a Roman Catholic parish church located in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris. It was originally the church of a Benedictine abbey founded in the 6th century, by Childebert I, the son of Clovis, King of the Franks. It was destroyed by the Vikings, rebuilt, and renamed in the 8th century for Saint Germain, an early Bishop of the city. It is considered the oldest existing church in Paris. Originally located outside the walls of medieval Paris, in the fields and meadows of the Left Bank, known as 'les Pres', it became part of a rich and important abbey complex, famous for its illuminated manuscripts and scholarship, and was the burial place of Germanus and of Childebert and other Merovingian kings. The oldest part of the current church is the lower portion of western tower (partly restored and modified), which was built by Abbot Morard around the year 1000. It was the first church in the Ile-de-France to have flying buttresses, added at the end of the 12th century. In 1621, a new order of Benedictine Monks, the Congregation of Saint Maur, was founded at Saint-Germain. They were particularly devoted to research and scholarship, They trained monks to collect and study texts on varied subjects and produced very fine illuminated manuscripts, which circulated throughout Europe, and made Paris one of the leading academic centres of the continent.

**Foire Saint-Germain**

The earliest references to the annual fair date to 1176. The fairground itself was established in 1482 by Louis XI for the benefit of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and was located near the Abbey on the Left Bank southwest of the city center just outside one of the gates of the city wall built by Philip II at the beginning of the 13th century. The fair generally lasts three to five weeks around Easter. The fair's first actors whose names are recorded were Jehan Courtin and Nicolas Poteau, who so entertained the Parisian public in 1595 that the actors of the Hôtel de Bourgogne filed a suit against them; they probably lost because the two fairground actors returned several years later. In 1618, André Soleil and Isabel Le Gendre met with similar success. Later, marionette manipulators, tightrope walkers and animal trainers became a staple of the fair and many of Paris citizens flock to see the performances every Easter.

**Palais du Luxembourg**

The Palais du Luxembourg was originally built to the designs of the French architect Salomon de Brosse to be the royal residence of the regent Marie de' Medici, mother of King Louis XIII. However, following her periods of exile, it has never been used for its original purpose and on occasion, serves as a home for the royal family.

**Abbaye Saint-Victor**

Abbaye Saint-Victor, also known as Royal Abbey and School of Saint Victor, is an old abbey whose origins are connected to the decision of William of Champeaux, the Archdeacon of Paris, to retire to a small hermitage near Paris in 1108. He took on the life, vocation and observances of the Canons Regular, and his new community followed the Augustinian Rule. William was famed for his teaching, and was followed to his hermitage by many of his disciples, including Peter Abelard, and was convinced by them to take up his lecturing again. William was made Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne in 1113, and was succeeded in his hermitage at St. Victor's by Gilduin, who promoted the canonical order and its new abbey vigorously.

**Jardins des Plantes**

The garden was formally founded in earlier in 1635 as the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants by an edict of King Louis XIII. The garden was put under the authority of the Physician of the king, Guy de la Brosse. It is staffed by a group of 'demonstrateurs', who lecture visitors, particularly future physicians and pharmacists, on botany, chemistry, and geology, illustrated by the garden collections.

**Cour de Miracles**

The Cour de Miracles (Court of Miracles) is large derelict slum area in the center of Paris, a maze of tents, shacks and alleyways, all under layers of drapery. What started as a mere few encampments of the homeless and disenfranchised, slowly grew over years into an en masse slum, filled with hundreds if not thousands of those ostracised by society. The sick, the homeless, the disabled, they all call the court home. And among their number harbour the many thieves and criminals of the city's underbelly.