Historic Paris

Boulevard Richard-Lenoir shows us nothing of special interest. The house No. 140 is ancient.

The fine old entrance portal of la Salpétrière, the statue of the famous Dr. Charcot just outside it, the various seventeenth-century buildings, the old woodwork within the hospital, the courtyard known as the Cour des Massacres, the wide extending grounds, make a visit to this old hospital very interesting. And the grass-grown open space before it, with its shady trees, and the quaint streets around give a somewhat rural and provincial aspect to this remote corner of Paris, making us feel as if we were miles away from the city. Rue de Campo-Formio, opening at No. 123, was known in the seventeenth century as Rue des Étroites Ruelles. Rue Rubens was in past days Rue des Vignes.

Along boulevard St-Jacques (seventeenth century) we find several tumbledown old houses.

Boulevard Raspail is entirely modern, cut across streets of bygone ages, their houses of historic memory razed to make way for it. The recently erected No. 117 stands on the site of an old house where Victor Hugo dwelt and wrote for thirteen years and received the notable men of his day. Beneath the tree we see in the wall at No. 112 the poet loved to sit and read. Reaching the top of the boulevard we see the ancient Jesuit chapel, between Rue de Sèvres and Rue du Cherche-Midi.

Boulevard Edgar-Quinet began as boulevard de Montrouge. Its chief point of interest is the Montparnasse cemetery dating from 1826, with its numerous tombs of notable persons. There we see, too, an ivy-covered tower dating from the seventeenth century, known as la Tour-du-Moulin, once the possession of a community of monks.

The boulevards des Invalides, de Montparnasse and de Port-Royal make one long line. Boulevard des Invalides has its chief point of interest at No. 33, the old hôtel Biron, later the convent of the Sacré-Cœur, then Rodin’s studio, and Paris home—now in part the museum he bequeathed to Paris (see pp. 192, 194).

Boulevard Montparnasse, formed in 1760, shows us many fine eighteenth-century hôtels and some smaller structures of the same period. On the site of No. 25, the hôtel of the duc de Vendôme, grandson of Henri IV, was the home of the children of Louis XIV by Madame de Montespan.

Boulevard de Port-Royal: here at No. 119 we see the abbey built during the first half of the seventeenth century. Hither came the good nuns of Port-Royal-des-Champs in the valley of the Chevreuse, a convent founded in the early years of the thirteenth century by Mathieu de Montmorency and his wife Mathilde de Garlande and given to the Order of the Bernardines. In the sixteenth century learned men desiring solitude found it in that remote convent. Pascal made frequent sojourns there. Quarrels between Jesuits and Jansenists brought about the destruction of the convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs in 1710. The Paris Port-Royal went on until 1790. Then the abbey became a prison, like so many other important buildings, religious and secular; its name was changed to Port-Libre, and numerous prisoners of note, Couthon among the rest, were shut up there. In the year IV of the Convention, it became what it is on a more complete scale to-day, a Maternity Hospital. Women-students sleep in the ancient nuns’ cells. Most of the old abbey buildings are still intact. The tombstone of the recluse, Arnauld of Andilly, which we see in the sacristy, was found beneath the pavement some years ago. The portal is modern. The annexe of the hospital Cochin at No. 111 is an ancient Capucine convent; its chapel serves as the hospital lecture-room.

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 aspect of the quays most quaint and entrancing, where they pass through the heart of the city.

Let us start from the Point-du-Jour, the “Dawn of Day,” at the point where the boundary-line of Paris touches the banlieue to the south-east. The name refers to a famous duel fought here at the break of day on a memorable morning in 1743. Taking the Rive Droite, the right bank, we follow the Quai d’Auteuil which, till the closing years of the nineteenth century, was a mere roadway along which the river boats were loaded and unloaded. The fine viaduct across the river was built in 1864-65. It was fiercely bombarded in the war of 1870. On Sundays and fête-days this quaint quay is gay with holiday-makers who crowd its popular cafés, drinking-booths and shows.

Quai de la Conférence, arrondissement VIII, dates from the latter years of the eighteenth century, its name referring to the middle of the previous century, when Spanish statesmen entered Paris by a great gate in its vicinity to confer concerning the marriage of Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse.

Cours-la-Reine, bordering the Seine along this quay, was first planted by Marie de’ Medici in 1618, on market-garden ground. It was a favourite and fashionable promenade in the time of the Fronde; a moat surrounded it and iron gates closed it in. At No. 16 of Rue Bayard leading out of it, we see the Maison de François I, its sculptures the work of Jean Goujon, brought here, bit by bit, in 1826 from the quaint old village of Moret near Fontainebleau where it was first built. On its frontage we read an inscription in Latin.

L’Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel dates from 1806, set up to commemorate the campaign of 1805. The large square, in the centre of which stands the colossal statue of Gambetta, known in the time of the Second Empire as the Cour Napoléon III, was covered in previous days by a number of short, narrow streets, interlacing. Several mansions, one or two chapels, a small burial-ground, and a theatre, were there among these streets and on beyond, and the grounds of the great hospital for the blind, the “Quinze-Vingts,” stretched along the banks of the Seine at this point, extending from the hospital, in Rue St-Honoré, its site from its foundation till its removal to Rue de Charenton in 1779 (see p. 250). Alongside the Quai we see the terrace “Bord de l’Eau,” of the Tuileries gardens. The Orangerie reconstructed in 1853 was in the seventeenth century a garden wherein was the famous Cabaret Regnard, forerunner of the modern Casino. From this terrace to the Tuileries Palace ran the subterranean passage made by Napoléon I for Marie Louise, and here was the Pont-tournant, built by a monk in 1716, across which Louis XVI was led back on his return from the flight to Varennes.

Quai des Gesvres was built by the Marquis de Gesvres in 1641. The ancient arcades upon which it rests, hidden away with their vaulted roofing, still support this old quay. The shops they once sheltered were knocked to pieces in 1789. The Café at No. 10, built in 1855, was named “A la Pompe Notre-Dame,” to record the existence till then on the bridge, Pont Notre-Dame, of the twin pumps from which the inhabitants of the neighbourhood drew their water. Rue de la Tâcherie (tâche, task, work) was known in thirteenth-century days as Rue de la Juiverie. This is still the Jews’ quarter of the city.

Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville was formed in its present aspect in the nineteenth century, of three ancient thoroughfares along the banks of the Seine. Corn and hay were in old days landed here. On the walls of the house No. 34 we see the date 1548, and find within an interesting old staircase. At No. 90 opens the old Rue de Brosse, named in memory of the architect of the fine portal of St-Gervais, before us here (see p. 103), and of the Luxembourg palace, close by the ancient impasse at the south end of the church; and at the junction of Quai des Célestins, opens the twelfth-century Rue des Nonnains d’Hyères, where the nuns d’Yerres had of old a convent. Almost every house is ancient. In the court at No. 21 we see the interesting façade of the hôtel d’Aumont, now the Pharmacie Centrale des Hôpitaux.

Quai des Orfèvres, the goldsmith’s quay, dating from the end of the sixteenth and first years of the seventeenth centuries, lost its most ancient, most picturesque structures by the enlarging of the Palais de Justice in recent years. In ancient days a Roman wall passed here. At No. 20 of the Rue de Harlay, opening out of it, we see part of an ancient archway. At No. 2 a Louis XIII house. Nos. 52-54 on the quai date from 1603, the latter once the firm of jewellers implicated in the affaire du collier. At No. 58 lived Strass, the inventor of the simili-diamonds.

Quai de la Cité was built in 1785, on the site of the ancient port-aux-œufs, remains of which were unearthed in making the metropolitan railway, a few years ago. Along these banks we see the Paris bird shops; the Marché-aux-Oiseaux is held here. And close by is the Marché-aux-Fleurs. Merovingian remains were found beneath the surface on this part of the quay in 1906. Thick, strong walls believed to have been built by Dagobert, inscriptions, capitals, tombstones—the remains of oldest Paris.

The Square de l’Archevêché, laid out in 1837, was in olden days a stretch of waste land known as the “Motte aux Papelards,” the playground of the Cathedral Staff. Boileau’s Paris home was here in a street long swept away. His country-house, as we know, was at Auteuil (see p. 275). In 1870 the square was turned for the time into an artillery ground.

Quai de Bourbon on the Île St. Louis dates from 1614. Every house along its line is interesting, of seventeenth-century date for the most part. At No. 3, we see a shop of the days and style Louis XV. Nos. 13-15, hôtel de Charron, where in modern times Meissonnier had his studio. We see fine doors and doorways, courts, staircases, balustrades, at every house. No. 29 was the home of Roualle de Boisgelon. Philippe de Champaigne lived for a time at No. 45.

Quai d’Orléans was named after Gaston, the brother of Louis XIII. No. 18 is the hôtel Roland. No. 6 is a Polish museum and library.

Quai de Béthune, once Quai du Dauphin, named by the Revolutionists Quai de la Liberté, shows us seventeenth-century houses along its entire course. No. 32 was the home of the statesman Turgot in his youth—his father’s house. Subterranean passages ran to the Seine from No. 30, and some other riverine houses. At No. 24, built by Le Vau, we find an interesting court, with fountain, etc.

RIVE GAUCHE (Left Bank).

We will start again from the south-western corner. Here in 1777, in the little riverside hamlet beyond Paris, a big factory was built, where was first made the disinfectant, of so universal use in France, known as eau de Javel. The Quai de Javel was constructed some fifty years later.

Quai de Grenelle, a rough road from the eighteenth century, was built at the same period. The Allée des Cygnes owes its name to the ancient Île des Cygnes, known in the sixteenth century and onwards as Île Maquerelle, or mal querelle, for the secluded islet on the Seine, joined later to the river-bank, offered a fine spot in those days for fights and quarrels. In the time of Louis XIV the islet was a public promenade, and the King had swans put there, hence its name.

Quai Malaquais began as Quai de la Reine Marguerite, but was nicknamed forthwith Quai Mal-acquet (Mal-acquis) because the Queen, Henri IV’s light-lived, divorced wife, had taken the abbey grounds of the Petit Pré-aux-Clercs whereon to build her garden-surrounded mansion. At No. 1 the architect Visconti died in 1818. In 1820 Humboldt lived at No. 3. The statue of Voltaire by Caillé was set up opposite No. 5 in 1885. The house at No. 9 was built about 1624 on the ground mal-acquis by Margaret de Valois. No. 11, École des Beaux-Arts, is on the site of the ancient hôtel de Brienne, Louis XIV’s Secretary of State. Joined later to the house next door it became the home of Mazarin, by and by of Fouché, and was made to communicate with the police offices at a little distance. Nos. 15 and 17, built by Mansart in 1640, restored a century later, after long habitation by persons of noted name, was taken over by the State, and in 1885 annexed to the Beaux-Arts.

Quai St-Michel was known for a time in Napoléon’s day as Quai de la Gloriette. Its first stone was laid so far back as 1561, then no more stones added till 1767, an interim of two centuries. Another interruption deferred its completion to the year 1811. The two narrow sordid streets we see opening on to it, Rue Zacharie and Rue du Chat qui Pêche, date, the first from 1219, as in part Rue Sac-à-lie in part Rue des Trois-Chandeliers, from its earliest days a slum; the second, a mere alley, from 1540.

Quai d’Austerlitz is the old Quai de l’Hôpital. The boundary-line between Paris and what was before its incorporation the village of Austerlitz passed at No. 21. The famous hôtel des Haricots, the prison of the Garde Nationale, where many artists and men of letters of olden days served a period of punishment, often left their names written in couplets on its walls, was till the early years of last century on the site where now we see the busy departure platform of the Gare d’Orléans.

A truly historic bridge is the Pont de la Concorde, built between 1787 and 1790, finished with stones off the razed Bastille, and called at first Pont Louis XVI. Louis’ head fell, and the bridge became Pont de la Révolution. Twelve immense statues of famous statesmen and warriors were set up on it in 1828. They were considered too big, and in 1851 were taken away to the Cour d’Honneur de Versailles.

Pont-des-Arts, so called from its vicinity to the Louvre, leading in a straight line from the colonnaded archway of the Court Carrée to the Institut, was opened in 1804, restored 1854.

The Pont St-Michel we see to-day was built in 1857. The first bridge there, joining the mainland to the island on the Seine, was constructed towards the close of the fourteenth century. That bridge and two successive ones were destroyed by fire.

Pont-au-Change, the Money-changers’ Bridge, was in olden days a wooden construction which went by the names Pont de la Marchandise and Pont-aux-Oiseaux. Jewellers as well as money-changers plied their trade along its planks, perhaps also bird merchants. It was a little higher up the river in its early twelfth century days and was often flooded. It was badly burnt, too, more than once; then in the seventeenth century was entirely rebuilt of stone, and bronze statues of the royal family, Louis XIII, Louis XIV as a child, and Anne d’Autriche, set up there. In the century following the houses upon it were all cleared away and in 1858 it was again rebuilt.

Pont d’Arcole, built as we now see it in 1854, succeeded a wooden bridge erected in 1828 with the name Pont de la Grève, commonly called Pont de la Balance. It gained its present name, recalling Napoléon’s victory of 1796, in the Revolution of 1830, when a youth at the head of a band of insurgents rushed upon the bridge waving the tricolor and shouting: “If I die, remember my name is Arcole.”

Pont-au-Double, so called because to cross it passengers paid a double toll for the benefit of the Hôtel-Dieu, is a nineteenth-century construction, replacing the original bridge of the name built in the sixteenth century, a little higher up the river.

Pont de l’Archevêché dates from 1828. Pont St-Louis, joining l’Île de la Cité to l’Île St-Louis, was built in 1614 as a wooden bridge painted red and called, therefore, Pont-Rouge. Like all wooden erections of the age, it was damaged by fire, and in the eighteenth century at the time of the Revolution, “icebergs” on the Seine knocked it over. An iron footbridge was put up in its place and remained till 1862, when the bridge we see was built.

Pont Louis-Philippe was built in the same year to replace a suspension bridge paying toll.