Historic Paris

The Louvre has existed on the selfsame site from the earliest days of the history of Paris and of France. It began as a rough hunting-lodge, erected in the time of the _rois fai...

Round about these old palaces and churches some ancient streets still remain and many old houses, relics of bygone ages. Others have been swept away to make room for up-to-date...

The legend telling us the great Paris Market was first called “les Alles”--no “H”--because everybody _y allait_, i.e. went there, need not be taken seriously. Even in remote med...

The history of Paris and of France, from the earliest days of their story, is connected with the Palais de Justice on the western point of the island on the Seine. The palace st...

Rue des Petits-Champs marks the boundary between the arrondissements I and II--the odd numbers in arrondissement I, the even ones in arrondissement II. The street was opened in...

A long stretch of the busy boulevard Sébastopol forms the boundary between arrondissements II and III. Several short old streets run between the Boulevard and Rue St-Martin. Rue...

OF the renowned citadel and domain of mediæval times, from which the arrondissement takes its name, nothing now remains. A modern square (1865) has been arranged on the site of...

We are now in the vicinity of that most entrancing of historic museums, Musée Carnavalet, and its neighbouring library. On the wall of Rue de Sévigné is still to be read engrave...

Rue Lutèce, the French form of the Roman word Lutetia, recording the ancient name of the city, is a modern street on ancient historic ground. There, on the river island, the fir...

Crossing the bridge painted of yore bright red and known therefore as le Pont-Rouge, we find ourselves upon the Île St-Louis, in olden days two distinct islands: l’Île Notre-Dam...

The Hôtel de Ville, which gives its name to the arrondissement, is a modern erection built as closely as possible on the plan and from the designs of the fine Renaissance struct...

We come now to the interesting old-world quarter behind and surrounding the church St-Paul and the Lycée Charlemagne, the site of the palace St-Pol of ancient days. The church,...

Here we are on the old Place Royale--the _place_ where royalties dwelt and courtiers disported in the days of Louis XIII, whose statue we see still in the centre of the big, dre...

The famous prison which stood there from the end of the fourteenth century to the memorable summer of 1789, was built by Hugues Aubriot, Prévôt du Roi, as a fortified castle to...

Crossing the Seine by the Pont St-Michel we reach Place St-Michel, of which we will speak in another chapter, as it lies chiefly in arrondissement VI. Turning to the east, we co...

When St. Louis was on the throne of France the physician attendant upon his mother, la Reine Blanche, died bequeathing a sum of money for the institution of a college of theolog...

Rue de la Montagne Ste-Geneviève, leading to the hill-top from Boulevard St-Germain, went in twelfth-century days by the unæsthetic name Rue des Boucheries. Nearly every wall, e...

Emphatically a street of the past is the old Rue Mouffetard, its name a corruption perhaps of Mont Cérarius, the name of the district under the Romans, or derived maybe from the...

Passing amid the ancient colleges and churches, streets and houses we have been visiting, runs the old Rue St-Jacques. It begins at the banks of the Seine, stretches through the...

It was in the early years of the seventeenth century that the King’s physician bought a piece of waste ground--a _butte_ formed of the refuse of centuries accumulated there--for...

The palace that gives its name to the arrondissement was founded by Marie de’ Medici and built on the model of the Pitti palace at Florence by Salomon de Brosse between the year...

The tragic story of “les Carmes” has been repeatedly told. The convent was founded in 1613 by Princesse de Conti and la Maréchale d’Ancre for the Carmes Déchaussés, who hailed f...

Numerous ancient streets and some modern ones, on time-honoured ground, lead out of Rue Vaugirard. Rue Bonaparte, extending to the banks of the Seine, was formed in 1852 of thre...

An ancient _place_ and part of the old Rue de l’Hirondelle, and an ancient chapel stretched in bygone days where now we see the broad new Place St-Michel. The colossal fountain...

An interesting corner of Old Paris lies on the north-east side of the Odéon. Rue Racine, opening on the _place_ before the theatre, runs through the ancient territory of the Cor...

Passing to the western half of the arrondissement, we turn into the modern Rue de Rennes, running south from Place St-Germain-des-Prés along the lines of razed convent buildings...

It was Henri IV, _le bon Roi_, who first planned the erection of a special _hôtel_ to shelter aged and wounded soldiers. Meanwhile they were lodged in barracks in different part...

The word Varennes is a corruption of Garennes: in English the Rue de Varennes would be Warren Street, a name leading us back in thought to the remote age when the district was w...

The extensive district on the left bank of the Seine, through which was cut in modern times the wide boulevard St-Germain, was in its remotest days the Villa Sancti Germani, wit...

The handsome church which forms so distinct a feature of this quarter of the city was begun to be built in the year 1764 to replace an older church, originally a convent chapel,...

This wonderful avenue stretching through the whole length of the arrondissement reached in olden days only to the rural district of Chaillot, and was known as the Grande Allée-d...

Turning down Avenue Wagram, one of the twelve broad avenues, all modern, branching from the Place de l’Étoile, we come to the Faubourg St-Honoré, originally Chaussée du Roule. T...

We have already referred to Avenue Wagram. Modern buildings stretch along the whole course of the other eleven avenues branching from Place de l’Étoile. Avenue Hoche leads us to...

The Paris Opera-house was built between the years 1861-75 to replace the structure in Rue le Peletier burnt to the ground in 1873. On its ornate Renaissance façade we see, amid...

Rue de Clichy was once upon a time the Roman road between Paris and Rouen, taking in its way the village Cligiacum. For long in later days it was known as Rue du Coq, when the o...

The Rue du Faubourg Montmartre is one of the most ancient of Paris roadways, for it led, from the earliest days of French history, to the hill-top where St-Denis and his two com...

The chief thoroughfares of historic interest in this arrondissement are the two ancient streets which stretch through its whole length: Rue du Faubourg St-Denis and Rue du Faubo...

We are now in the vicinity of the largest and most important of the Paris cemeteries--Père Lachaise. But it lies in the 20th arrondissement. The streets of this 10th arrondissem...

Rue du Faubourg St-Antoine forms the boundary between the arrondissements XI and XII. From end to end it shows us historic vestiges. It has played from earliest times an all-imp...

The brothers Gobelin, Jehan and Philibert, famous dyers of the day, established their great factory on the banks of the Bièvre about the year 1443. Jehan had a fine private mans...

The boundary-line between arrondissements XIII and XIV is Rue de la Santé, the name of the great Paris prison which stands there. It brings us to the vicinity of the Paris Obser...

Rue Vaugirard, originally Val Girard, which we enter here, on its course from arrondissement VI (_see_ p. 164), is the longest street in Paris, a union of several streets under...

We have left far behind us now Old Paris, the Paris of the Kings of France, of the upheaval of Revolution days. The 16th arrondissement, save in the remotest corners of Passy an...

Rue de Passy, the ancient Grande Rue, the village High Street before the district was included within the Paris boundary-line, dates from fifteenth-century days, when it was a f...

A number of small dwellings lying without the city bounds to the north, in the commune of Clichy, were known in the fifteenth century as “les Batignolles,” i.e. the little build...

We are on supremely interesting ground here, ground at once sacred, historic and characteristic of the mundane life of the city above which it stands. At or near its summit, St-...

In this essentially workaday district we see many houses old and quaint, but without architectural beauty or special historic interest. Round the park des Buttes-Chaumont, a lar...

The lower end of the long Rue de Belleville, its odd-number side in arrondissement XIX, went in olden days by the name Rue des Courtilles--Inn Street. Inns, cabarets, popular pl...

The Paris boulevards are one of the most characteristic features of the city. The word _boulevard_ recalls the days when Paris was fortified, surrounded by ramparts, and the cit...

Starting at the ancient Barrière des Ternes, for some years past Place des Ternes, we take our way through outer boulevards forming a wide circle. Boulevard de Courcelles, datin...

The quays of the Seine in its course through Paris are picturesque in the extreme and show at almost every step points of historic interest. That interest is strongest, the aspe...

Once more to the south-western corner of this “bonne ville de Paris.” The first bridge over the Seine within the city boundary, beginning at this end, is the Viaduct d’Auteuil (...