Since the first settlers built a fence around their settlement, the inhabitants of Paris have constructed walls around their habitat. As early as the 4th century CE, there were walls on Cité Island. As the city grew, new walls were erected, forming concentric circles, from Gallo-Roman times to the 21st century. Let’s have a closer look.
The city wall of Philippe Auguste dates back to the 13th century. Remains can be found near the Pantheon in the 5tharrondissement on the left bank, as well as in the 4tharrondissement on the right bank, in the Marais and near the Village Saint Paul.
The city wall of Charles V dates back to the 14th century. It was destroyed in the 17th century.
TheGeneral Farmers Wall was built between 1784 and 1791 by the corporation of tax farmers. It was no longer a wall to protect Paris from invaders but to collect taxes on incoming goods.
Finally, the Adolphe Thiers Wallfrom 1846 corresponds more or less exactly to the boulevard des Maréchaux of today.
The present-day Paris city limitlies just a little over 100m further out and is marked by the Boulevard Périphérique (“Périph” or BP) expressway, a 35km-long ring road around Paris, but also including the Bois de Boulogne to the west, the Bois de Vincennes to the east, and a heliport in the southwest, near the Seine river.
The evolution of Paris city walls
We will have a closer look at each of these walls in the following posts. Stay tuned!
As first a settlement and later a city, Paris has existed for over 2,000 years. History has left its marks on the city, and traces of different time periods can be found all around Paris. In non-chronological order, let’s look at some that you might have come past during a visit without knowing.
If you have been driving on the roads of northwestern France, maybe you have noticed stone markers with a flame in addition to regular distance markers. The bornes de la liberté are set along the route of the Allied Forces from D-Day in June 1944. Liberty Road (la Voie de la Liberté) starts in Normandy, travels across northern France to Metz near the German border and then northwards to Bastogne on the border of Luxemburg and Belgium. But other markers can be found outside of this main route.
In March 1941, following the battle of Kufra in Libya, Leclerc (then a colonel) and his men swear an oath to “not put down the arm until our colours fly over the cathedral of Strasburg”. They fulfilled their oath in November of the same year. But before they could liberate Strasburg, they had to liberate Paris.
In August 1944, the Second Armored Division, in French 2e Division Blindée shortened to 2e DB, marched into Paris from the south. Commanded by the now General Leclerc, it was also called the Division Leclerc.
This monument commemorates not only the Oath of Kufra and the Liberation itself but also the events in this town the 2e DB crossed.
Traces of the combat in Paris in August 1944 can be found–among other places–on the wall of the Paris School of Mines on the boulevard Saint Michel (6tharrondissement, near the Luxemburg Gardens).
The avenue d’Orléans, in the 14tharrondissement leading from the Porte d’Orléans to the Place Denfert-Rochereau is today called Avenue du Général Leclerc.
Map of Paris showing the Avenue du Général Leclerc (the lower point) and the wall of the Paris School of Mines (the upper point).
Did you know that in French, a “hotel” isn’t always a place where you can book a room for a night? A hôtel-Dieu, for example, was originally a hospital for the poor run by the Catholic Church, Dieu being the French word for God. The most famous of all these hospitals is also the oldest in Paris, created in the year 651 by the Parisian Bishop Saint Landry. Today you can find the hospital building right next to Notre Dame on Cité Island.
A hôtel particulier is no more a hotel than a hôtel-Dieu, but a grand townhouse or mansion. Their main characteristic is that they will be free-standing, most often located between the main courtyard and the garden, and of course, be in a city.
The Hôtel de Sens is a hôtel particulier built in the 15th century in the 4tharrondissement, near the Seine river. At the time, Paris did not have its own archbishop but belonged to the archbishopric of the Archbishop of Sens, a town 100km to the southeast of Paris. The archbishop had this hôtel particulier built as his pied-à-terre when he was in Paris. Several archbishops resided there, in fact, over time, as well as other notable figures such as Antoine du Prat, chancellor and prime minister under King François 1er, Louis de Bourbon-Vendôme, a prince from the royal family, or Louis de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine.
One resident, however, had a more eventful stay than the others: Marguerite de Valois, better known as La Reine Margot (granddaughter of François 1er and first wife of King Henri IV). Her marriage with King Henri IV was annulled in 1599. She lived at the Hôtel de Sens from 1605 to 1606. Legend has it that she had a fig tree at the door cut down because it was in the way of her carriages. Whether it is true or not, the street now bears its name.
Marguerite had a number of lovers. According to another legend, two of them fought it out just below her window. One was killed, the other executed in the same spot.
Main entrance of the Hôtel de Sens on the corner of Rue du Fauconnier and Rue du Figuier
During the Revolution, the Hôtel de Sens became property of the state, was sold and housed, like many hôtels particuliers in the area at the time, shops, workshops, or factories. During the 1830 Revolution (commemorated by the July Column at Bastille), a cannonball hit the façade and lodged so deep within the wall it became impossible to remove. It is still there today, visible to any passersby, with the date engraved beneath.
On Saturday, January 16, 2021, Paris woke up in the snow. We don’t have snow very often here, and when it falls, it rarely stays on the ground due to everything that heats up the ground, from the rarely-below-0°C temperatures to the métro and other underground installations. I’ve been living here for twenty years, and I can count the number of days where the snow actually covered the ground on my hands.
In January and March 2013, we had a bunch of snow days, and again for two days in February 2018. Every other snowfall in the last decade has been negligible. Hence the excitement of visitors, the confusion of unused-to-snow locals (without adequate footwear), the amusement of Montrealers, and the desperation of overground public transport drivers.
You might know Nicolas Flamel from fiction stories or movies, where he is portrayed as an immortal alchemist who discovered the philosopher’s stone. But did you know Nicolas Flamel was a real-life person? Most facts about him are debated and vary from one source to another, so I’ll stick with the key points.
Nicolas Flamel’s birth year and place are uncertain, but he was probably born around 1340 in the Paris area. He died on March 22, 1418 in Paris. As a child, he was lucky enough not to die of the plague, which in 1348 killed between a third and half of the European population.
In the days long before the printing press was invented, Nicolas Flamel began his career as a public writer in a small single-story house in the rue des Écrivains, Writers Street. This street disappeared when the central east-west axis rue de Rivoli was created in the 1800s.
Nicolas Flamel married Pernelle, twice widowed, with whom he opened a small shop near the church Saint Jacques de la Boucherie, and a workshop nearby specialized in precious manuscripts. He financed the construction of a doorway of the Saint Jacques de la Boucherie church, the arcade of which showed him with Pernelle. Today, only the Tour Saint Jacques remains of this church, a tower which was built a hundred years later.
The Tour Saint Jacques seen from Rue Nicolas Flamel
It was often speculated how the Flamels acquired their wealth, and Nicolas was rumored to be a successful alchemist. In reality, Pernelle brought money into the marriage from her previous two husbands, and Nicolas had a successful career as a scribe and bookseller. He also owned several houses in Paris and its suburbs, real estate investments that in the economic depression of the Hundred Year War contributed to his wealth.
They contributed financially to churches, and Nicolas continued to do so after Pernelle’s death in 1397. He had several houses built to house the poor. The only one still in existence is located at 51 rue de Montmorency (3rdarrondissement) and is said to be one of the oldest stone houses in Paris.
Nicolas Flamel died in 1418 and was buried in the church Saint Jacques de la Boucherie. His bones, together with Pernelle’s, were later transferred to the Catacombs. His tombstone can be seen in the National Museum of the Middle Ages – Musée Cluny in Paris.
location of Rue Nicolas Flamel and Maison Nicolas Flamel
You might know this: You come back into a neighborhood where you haven’t been for a while, and a shop you remember has changed. The cute little tearoom has become a shoe store, or the flower shop has been transformed into a bookstore. Sometimes I come across shops where you can see what they used to be – generally something very different. Let me show you some of them.
This place in the Marais neighborhood (4tharrondissement) used to buy horses, as “achat de chevaux” indicates, certainly to transform them into meat which would have been sold at a horse butcher’s, a boucherie chevaline, recognizable by the horse head over the entrance.
This former Hamman (also in the Marais) now houses a fashion store on the ground floor, just like this bakery.
Here we have a former fishmonger’s that clearly doesn’t sell anything any longer.
This fishmonger’s, on the other hand, seems to have traded the sale of poissons, fish, for the sale of boissons, drinks.
The first métro line in Paris was opened for the 1900 world fair. It ran from Porte de Vincennes on the eastern city limits to Porte Maillot on the western end and linked the different sites of the world fair as well as the Olympic games sites in the Bois de Vincennes. Today, it runs as far west as the La Défense business district which is outside the city limits.
Line 1 runs pretty much straight east-west on the historic axis of Paris, including the Avenue des Champs Élysées.
It crosses every other metro line except for the 3 and the 10 and is the most used, both by locals and by tourists, serving notably the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Champs Élysées.
Built in part under the open sky, notably under the rue de Rivoli and the Champs Élysées, the corresponding stations are boxes the width of the street. Their walls are practically on the same level as the foundations of the buildings above.
Under the street…
…the métro station.
The boxes were covered with a roof, as above at the Hôtel de Ville station with steel bars and rivets.
When the metro trains were lengthened from 5 to 6 cars, the platforms had to be extended as well, from 75 to 90m. In stations with fewer passengers, they simply dug into the tunnels, as at the far end of Saint Paul station below.
Since 2013, the line 1 is entirely automatic. In order to avoid any accidents or suicide attempts, all stations have glass walls along the entire length of the platform. There is no driver and you can stand at the head of the train. Let me take you on a ride.
Every once in a while, and mostly in the winter months, Paris will get its feet wet. The city is cut into Left Bank and Right Bank (as I explain here) by the river Seine which has its source near Dijon and flows from there roughly northwest to reach the English Channel at Le Havre. Its drainage basin covers most of the north of France.
Despite the existence of several large storage reservoirs upriver of Paris built since 1950, the river has repeatedly risen to high levels in the city, especially in 1924, 1955, 1982, 1999-2000, June 2016 and January 2018.
flood markers at the river fighter-fighters – see 1910 at the very top?
The worst flood, however, dates back to 1910 and is often qualified as a 100-year flood. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t mean it occurs once in a hundred years, but has a one-in-a-hundred chance of occurring in any given year.
The 1910 flood resulted from a combination of high rainfall, snow and frozen ground, flooding of several tributaries of the Seine and the already saturated underground of the Paris Basin.
Over only ten days, the Seine rose to the 8,62m level (at Pont d’Austerlitz, the official point of reference) and took 35 days to go back down, peaking on January 28. All the neighborhoods along the river were under water, and people had to use boats and wooden walkways (like you see in Venice during Aqua Alta).
On January 20, ships could no longer navigate the river in Paris because they couldn’t pass under the bridges any longer.
photos from the 2016 and 2018 floods
On January 23, the Seine reached the quay walls which had been built to the height of the 1876 flood, and parts of the city were flooded. On January 28, peak day of the flood, some 22,000 basements and hundreds of streets were flooded with water and ice. The problem worsened as underground sewage pits that were not connected to the sewage network, polluted the water. The tankers that normally evacuate the sewage could no longer pass under the bridges, and the sanitary situation became worrying, with typhoid and scarlet fever cases.
The economy was hard hit, in particular bookstores and publishers whose entire stocks were destroyed. Some 20,000 buildings were flooded in Paris, as well as half of the existing métro network. The brand-new line 4, inaugurated only weeks earlier, is closed.
Flood marker in the Conciergerie on Cité Island
Today, the 1910 flood is the reference used for any rise of the river level. Throughout the city, you can find markers indicating the height of the 1910 flood.
The 2018 flood makes news headlines but remains well below the 1910 marker.
The latest two floods, in June 2016 and January 2018, made headlines around the world, and spectacular photos were posted on social networks, including by me.
riverbank in the 4th arrondissement during and after 2016 flood
The Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, both located on the riverbanks, closed down and transferred their underground storage items to street level for safekeeping. Still, these floods remained well below that of 1910.
2018 flood at Pont de Rouelle – see the 1910 flood marker?
One important if unofficial reference for the level of the river is the stone statue of the Zouave on the Pont de l’Alma. It is the stone statue of a French soldier from the Zouaves, a former light infantry regiment of the French army which took their name from a North African tribe well-known for their bravery.
When the Seine is at its normal level, the Zouave remains completely dry. During the 1910 flood, the water reached its shoulders. When the bridge was rebuilt in the 1970s, the Zouave was moved to a lower position, making any direct comparisons impossible. However, it still remains a reference for Parisians, and it had crowds of visitors during the 2016 and 2018 floods, when the water reached up to its waist.
Zouave during the height of the 2018 flood
Paris flood 1910: flooded areas of the city in grey
When Paris decided it needed an underground train network, the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris, the metropolitan train company of Paris, was founded. It later bought up other smaller companies and incorporated their lines into its network, all under the name Métropolitain. Unlike other big cities which have a certain uniformity in their underground/subway signage, Paris has various different signs signalling an entrance to the below-ground transport network.
It all started with the Société Nord-Sud, whose initials can still be seen in the frames of some billboards on the platforms.
Nord-Sud built and ran three metro lines in the early 20th century before being bought up by the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris
The most famous entrance signs are those created by Hector Guimard in Art Nouveau style. There were two different types, with and without a glass roof. Of the former, only two remain today, at the stations Porte Dauphine and Abbesses.
The roof-less type is quite numerous and can be found all across town.
This type was given to other cities around the world, such as Mexico City, Chicago, Lisbon, or Moscow. These are all copies, though, the only original one was given to Montreal at the occasion of the World Fair in 1867. It can be found at the station Square Victoria.
The 1920s saw the introduction of totem sign, first more elaborate
then simpler:
At Madeleine station, the totem signals a metro entrance that doubles as an underground passage.
METADATA-STARTMETADATA-START
A few stations have particular entrances, such as Vaneau.
The most easily visible sign, however, might be the unadorned yellow M, dating from the 1970s. Not to be confused with another yellow M, it is surrounded by a steel circle and illuminated from the inside at night.
And would you believe that this is a métro entrance? It is indeed, at the station Palais Royal. The kiosque des noctambules, the night-owls’ booth, was created by an artist and set up in the year 2000.
Even if you’re only a little bit familiar with the French language, you’re bound to have noticed the slanting dashes the French put above certain vowels. At the very least you’ll know the one from café, right? There are three kinds, called “accents”, and you’ll see them mostly above the letter e but also sometimes with certain other vowels. However, do you know the catch (or hook) beneath the letter c?
This kind of c is called “c cédille” and like the accents above, it serves to indicate how the letter is pronounced. In French, the letter c can be pronounced “hard” like the C in Canada or “soft” like the C in Caesar (who is spelled César in French).
Normally, you pronounce a c the hard way when it is followed by the vowels a, o, or u or a consonant, and the soft way when it is followed by the vowels e or i or the letter y. However, sometimes you have a soft c before an a, o, or u, and in that case you add the catch to indicate the exceptional pronunciation. A very common example is the word ça (it/that), used all the time in the French equivalent of “How are you?”, namely “Ça va?” (the common answer to which is “Ça va”). It is also the French title of Stephen King’s novel “It”.
Another common occurrence is in the given name François, derived from “France”, also the French version of the current pope’s chosen name. France had two kings bearing that name in the 16th century. François II was the grandson of François 1er, with whom you might be familiar if you’ve been following me on Twitter, as he is an important character in my historic/time travel story.
Now that you know how to pronounce the name of two French kings and a French casual greeting, be advised that you might encounter the letter ç in other languages as well, where the pronunciation rule might be similar or different, for example in Turkish.
A final word: If you want to type the Ç or the ç on your non-French keyboard, hold down the ALT key and type on the number pad 128 for the upper-case and 135 for the lower-case “c cédille”.
