| | | Ile de la Cité
Paris IVème (France)
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Subway station : Châtelet , Saint-Michel
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| | | The Ile de la Cité is one of two natural islands in the Seine within the city of Paris (the other being Ile Saint-Louis, the Ile des Cygnes being artificial). It is the centre of Paris and the location where the medieval city was refounded. | | Ile de la Cité : Virtual tour |  | 16 sections and 11 items |
| | Ile de la Cité : Description | |
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The western end has held a palace since Merovingian times, and its eastern end since the same period has been consecrated to religion, especially after the 10th century construction of a cathedral preceding today's Notre Dame. The land between the two was, until the 1850s, largely residential and commercial, but since has been filled by the city's Prefecture de Police, Palais de Justice, Hôtel-Dieu hospital and Tribunal de Commerce. Only the westernmost and northeastern extremities of the island remain residential today, and the latter preserves some vestiges of its 16th century canon's houses.
Sights
Three medieval buildings remain on the Ile de la Cité (east to west) :
- The Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, built from 1163 on the site of a church dedicated to Saint Étienne, which in turn occupied a sacred pagan site of Roman times. During the French Revolution the cathedral was badly damaged, then restored by Viollet-le-Duc.
- Louis IX's Sainte-Chapelle (1245), built as a reliquary to house the Crown of Thorns and a piece of the True Cross, enclosed within the Palais de Justice.
- The Conciergerie prison, where Marie Antoinette awaited execution in 1793.
The oldest remaining residential quarter is the Ancien CloItre. Baron Haussmann demolished some of the network of narrow streets, but was dismissed in 1869 before the entire quarter was lost.
Old engraved maps of Paris show how, when the Pont Neuf was built, it grazed the downstream tip - the "stern" of the island-ship. Since then, the natural sandbar building of a mid-river island, aided by stone-faced embankments called quais, has extended the island, which is planted as the small Vert Galant park, named for Henri IV of France, the "Green Gallant" king. It retains the original low-lying riverside level of the island. Nearby, a discreet plaque (illustration below) commemorates the spot where Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was burnt at the stake, March 18, 1314. The upstream tip of the island is home to the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation, a memorial to the 200,000 French citizens who were deported to German labour camps during the Second World War.
Transportation
The Ile de la Cité is connected to the rest of Paris by bridges to both banks of the river and to the Ile Saint-Louis. The oldest surviving bridge is the Pont Neuf ('New Bridge'), which lies at the western end of the island.
The island has one Paris Métro station, Cité; and the RER station Saint-Michel-Notre-Dame on the Left Bank has an exit in the square in front of the Cathedral. | | Ile de la Cité : History | |
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Most scholars believe that in 52 BC, at the time of Vercingetorix's struggle with Julius Caesar, a small Gallic tribe, the Parisii, were living on the island. It has also been said that a Roman by the name of Lutece founded the Ile de la Cité which started as a fortress. At that time, the island was a low-lying area subject to flooding that offered a convenient place to cross the Seine and was also a refuge in times of invasion. However, some modern historians believe the Parisii were based on another, now sunken island. After the conquest of the Celts, the Roman Labienus created a temporary camp on the island, but further Roman settlement developed in the healthier air on the slopes above the Left Bank, at the Roman Lutetia.
Later Romans under Saint Genevieve escaped to the island when their city was attacked by Huns. Clovis established a Merovingian palace on the island, which became the capital of Merovingian Neustria. The island remained an important military and political center throughout the Middle Ages. Eudes used the island as a defensive position to fend off Viking attacks in 885, and in the tenth century, a cathedral (the predecessor of Notre-Dame) was built on the island.
From early times wooden bridges linked the island to the riverbanks on either side, the Grand Pont (the Pont au Change) spanning the wider reach to the Right Bank, and the Petit Pont spanning the narrower crossing to the Left Bank. The first bridge rebuilt in stone (in 1378) was at the site of the present Pont Saint-Michel, but ice floes carried it away with the houses that had been built on it in 1408. The Grand Pont or Pont Notre-Dame, also swept away at intervals by floodwaters, and the Petit Pont were rebuilt by Fra Giovanni Giocondo at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The six arches of the Pont Notre-Dame supported gabled houses, some of half-timbered construction, until all were demolished in 1786.
The Ile de la Cité remains the heart of Paris. All road distances in France are calculated from the "zero kilometer" point located in the Place du Parvis de Notre-Dame, the square facing Notre-Dame's west end-towers.
From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_de_la_Cit%C3%A9
Text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
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