Paris, Ile de la Cité

The Ile de la Cité (Island of the City) is the cradle of Parisian civilization. For the past 2000 years a church stood on this island: A Gallo-Roman temple, a Christian basilica, and a Romanesque church preceded this cathedral. Notre Dame Cathedral, which was started in 1163 and completed about 1345, will hold a congregation of 9,000 people.

Centuries later, during the years following the French Revolution, hundreds of stately buildings were demolished by the revolutionaries. Fortunately, Napoléon Bonaparte decided he needed an ecclesiastical masterpiece as a properly impressive setting for his coronation, so this beautiful Gothic edifice was preserved. The cathedral building had been used to store forage and food, so it was a much-dilapidated building where Napoléon crowned himself Emperor of France, in 1804.

After years of neglect and the outcry resulting from the 1831 novel “Notre-Dame de Paris” by Victor Hugo, in 1841 Viollet-le-Duc (architect-archeologist) began the twenty-three year effort needed to restore Notre Dame to its former glory. This beautiful cathedral is now the focal point for great occasions such as ceremonies at the end of WW I, WW II, and the funeral for General De Gaulle in 1970 (a couple of months after our first visit here).

A hospital has been situated near Notre Dame Cathedral since the 1200s. The current one, Hôtel–Dieu, catty-cornered across the street from the cathedral, was built in 1868. One year, while my mother was in a hospital in Indiana, we stopped in the Gift Shop of Hótel Dieu and mailed a pink and white striped, peanut-shaped neck pillow to her.

West of Notre Dame is the Police Station and the Palais de Justice with the Law Courts and the prison of the Conciergerie. Marie Antoinette was imprisoned here from August 2 to October 16, 1793. During the French Revolution, La Conciergerie (with good reason) became known as “Death’s Antechamber;” nearly all who were imprisoned in that fortress left it only to go to the guillotine.

The beautiful La Sainte-Chapelle is hidden in a courtyard of the Law Courts, formerly the King’s Palace. The upper chapel has sixteen stained glass windows, nearly fifty feet high, with 6,672 square feet of the most outstanding stained glass, dating from the 1200s. When the sun shines through those marvelous windows, jewels of color embellish the old stone floor.

Eight bridges now connect Ile de la Cité to Rive Droite, the Right Bank, and Rive Gauche, the Left Bank of the Seine. Another bridge connects with Ile St. Louis.