Ile de la Cite
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- Published on Monday, 25 July 2011 06:17
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Walking Tours of Paris France - 1. Ile De La Cite
Ile de la Cite in Paris is a wonderful place to take a walking tour. Only a tiny part of the city, it encapsulates much of what is magical about Paris.
In many ways Ile de la Cite is the heart of Paris and was the original site of the city. It is an oblong island right in the River Seine, surrounded by water, it is accessible by many bridges. It is linked to the other River Seine island, Ile de St Louis. The website TravelGuide.TV has Paris France videos on Tours, Museums, Attractions, Shopping and these will set up the atmosphere and magic of this great city.
Some 2000 years ago Ile de la Cite was inhabited by a number of Celtic tribes and it is from one of these tribes that the name of the city originated.
The bridges linking the islands with the banks of the River Seine are in themselves evocative of Parisian themes, literature and the soul of the city - Pont Neuf, Point St Michel, Pont Notre Dame, Petit Pont, Pont D'Arcole and many more.
What to see on this walking tour of Paris? Notre Dame Cathedral, Sainte Chapelle, Palais de Justice, the Paris Flower Market, The Archaeological Crypt, among many others. Ile de la Cite is always bustling and crowded and you can marvel at the fleets of tourists walking along.
Apart from being the oldest part of Paris, Ile de la Cite is also the centre of the city - there is a small eight-point star set in the paving outside the front of Notre Dame de Paris. That is the mark from which all distances from Paris are measured.
Notre Dame in Paris is a chunky, immovable edifice with amazing flying buttresses and creepy gargoyles, it rises majestically beside the Seine. It is almost a 1000 years since the church was started and it was finished around 1330. During your visit, be sure to enjoy the deep colours of the West Rose Window (and there's a South Rose Window), check out the three magnificent main entry doors and statues, notice the contrast between the blocky towers at the front and the graceful elegant Spire to the side, marvel at the High Altar and the main Art treasures.
Notre Dame is where Henri IV was married in 1572, this is where Napoleon famously crowned himself in 1804, in 1944 there was a major ceremony of Thanksgiving to celebrate the Liberation of Paris from the Nazis.
Most scholars believe that in 52 BC, at the time of Vercingetorix's struggle with Julius Caesar, a small Gallic tribe, the Parisii, lived on the island. At that time, the island was a low-lying area subject to flooding that offered a convenient place to cross the Seine and a refuge in times of invasion. However, some modern historians believe the Parisii were based on another, now eroded 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. Odo used the island as a defensive position to fend off Viking attacks at the Siege of Paris (885–886), and in the tenth century, a cathedral (the predecessor of Notre-Dame) was built on the island.
Île de la Cité in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, circa 1410.
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.[2] 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 Île de la Cité remains the heart of Paris. All road distances in France are calculated from the 0 km point located in the Place du Parvis de Notre-Dame, the square facing Notre-Dame's west end-towers.