Paris: Walks on the Dark Side

By Catherine Grise

A practical guide to Paris for the tourist interested in exploring the dark and macabre side of the City of Light. This book highlights places connected with the more gruesome aspects of French history from the 16th century to just after the French Revolution. Visits to prison sites, museums, cemeteries, and places of torture and execution are interspersed with stories of notorious criminals and notable historical figures. Discover where to see a guillotine blade, the black bathtub in which Marat was assassinated, the heart of the boy-king Louis XVII, the grave of Heloise and Abelard, Marie-Antoinette's prison cell, and remnants of the Bastille. The last chapter proposes a series of walks arranged to lead the Paris visitor in a methodical way to all the previously mentioned sites.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catherine Grise
• Release date: Mar 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311000804

Catherine Grise

Catherine Grisé has published 7 books, all dealing with the literature of seventeenth-century France. In Paris: Walks on the Dark Side she brings together her knowledge of French history, her familiarity with the city of Paris and her personal fascination with the dark underbelly of history—murder, torture, poisonings and political intrigue!

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This guide to Paris is not for the faint-hearted! Some of us love to explore traces left by the darker side of history when they visit a city. Where in Paris can you see a blade of the guillotine? Where do you find the black bathtub in which Marat was assassinated? And where is the heart of the boy-king Louis XVII displayed? Where did witches get burned at the stake? Helping you to exhume the macabre past of the City of Light in a pleasurable and methodical way, this book proposes a series of walks. The sites on this itinerary are all connected with events from the period of the 16th-century Renaissance to the bloodthirsty aftermath of the French Revolution in the 18th-century.

What is the best way to use this guide? One method of exploring the dark side of Paris is to choose the chapter topics that particularly intrigue you, starting where you wish—perhaps with the prison sites or the Parisian cemeteries. Another way to proceed is to go directly to the final chapter, Walks on the Dark Side, and set out on a series of walks efficiently arranged according to the areas of Paris with references back to pertinent sections of the book.

CHAPTER ONE

THE PRISONS OF PARIS

So Many Prisons!

From the early Middle Ages right up until the time of the French Revolution, Paris had hundreds of prisons. This was because there were so many jurisdictions—the royal, the civil, and the ecclesiastical—each with its own right to judge and punish. That meant that each had its own tribunals, judges and prisons as well. There were military tribunals, commercial tribunals, a tribunal for affairs concerning gunpowder and canons; another judged poachers, and a special tribunal even judged those who did not pay the tax on salt! The ordinary courts were organized on different levels. The lower courts judged petty crimes: altercations, minor fraud, petty theft, insults, small debts, or damage by animals. The middle courts, from the 14th century on, judged not only petty crimes, but also those of a more serious nature, such as murder, abduction and cheating with weights and measures. The high court, directly under the aegis of the king handled political crimes, threats to national security, forgery, counterfeiting, blasphemy, etc. The king could render justice by royal decree and had his own royal prisons.

Prison Life: Our Itinerary

The best way to get an idea of what life was like in Paris prisons for many centuries is to start out at the Conciergerie where a museum is set up with reconstitutions of prison cells and other significant rooms. After that, a visit to the sites of the two most famous royal prisons—the Bastille and Vincennes, followed by a visit to La Salpêtrière, an infamous prison for women, will complete the tourist’s view of Paris prisons. These were all prisons under the Ancien Régime, that is until the time of the Revolution of 1789, and lodged notorious criminals. The Conciergerie was primarily a civil prison; the Bastille and Vincennes were royal prisons; La Salpêtrière is an example of places of internment that were partly hospital, partly prison and set up primarily to get the beggars and prostitutes off the streets.

1. THE CONCIERGERIE

WHERE TO GO

By metro, take line 4 and get off at the Cité station; you should take the elevator and not the endless stairs at this station. There is only one exit and, when you get to street level, walk across the large square towards the beautiful gilded grill of the Palais de Justice. The entrance to the Conciergerie is on the same sidewalk, just a short distance north (to your right).

The Conciergerie, not far from Notre-Dame, on the Île de la Cité, dates from the 14th century and is one of the oldest prisons still standing. Strictly speaking it was not a royal prison because its prisoners were mostly charged with crimes against the common law, such as stealing, loitering, and even murder. However, because this prison was actually in the royal palace, some inmates were also sent there by a direct decree of the king. The prison occupied the ground floor of the Palais de Justice on the Quai de l’Horloge. Where did its name come from? The prison was controlled by a concierge whose role was so important that the whole building took on the name La Conciergerie.

Some of the special fascination with this prison comes from the fact that at the time of the Revolution all the political prisoners from other prisons were transferred here; on the second floor, the Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced them to death by beheading. After being detained, some 2,780 prisoners—among them, Queen Marie-Antoinette, Danton and Robespierre—were literally carted off from the Conciergerie to the guillotine set up near the Seine just beyond Notre-Dame or at the Place de la Concorde.

The visitors’entrance to the Conciergerie is right next to the Courthouse (Palais de Justice) on the Boulevard du Palais. On the ground floor the entrance is through the Salle des Gardes; the first large room is the Salle des Gens d’Armes which at one time was a dining hall for the ancient palace before being converted into cells for male prisoners.

Also on this floor you will find the concierge’s office and the Salle de Toilette where prisoners were divested of any personal objects like jewellery or eyeglasses; here they also had their collars removed and their hair clipped in preparation for the guillotine blade before being paraded ignominiously through the streets on their way to their execution. On the second floor is a memorial to those who were condemned to the guillotine. Down the hall do not miss the reconstructions of the prisoners’ cells. Poor prisoners were called pailleux (they slept on straw, i.e. paille) and did not pay for any extras. Those who could afford a bed had further choices: a shared cell or, if they paid for it, they could have private accommodation. Private cell occupants could also pay extra to have a fireplace; they could even bring in their own furniture. For the well-to-do prisoners, bed sheets were changed each month in winter, every three weeks in summer; for the poor, the straw was changed every month. Social hierarchy was important, so only people of the same social rank could be lodged in the same room. The oldest prisoners got the best beds; women and children were housed separately. The prisoners’ food was provided according to three different arrangements: some of the wealthy had their own food delivered; others paid the concierge for food. The pailleux got one pound and a half of dry bread for a penny a day. They all attended Mass daily and could walk in the prison during the day. While the very poorest had miserable living conditions, charitable organizations helped them to some extent.

The visit continues downstairs where we find a reconstruction of Queen Marie-Antoinette’s prison cell. Her actual crucifix, water pitcher, table napkin and the original wallpaper are still there. Nearby is a small courtyard where the women prisoners could socialize and wash their clothes in a fountain.

Marie-Antoinette arrived here on August 2, 1793 without her children and without her sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth, all of whom had been with her in the Temple prison. The King had already been guillotined on January 21, 1793. Her son, Louis XVII, died in the Temple prison three years later at the age of 10; her daughter, Marie-Thérèse, was sent into exile. Marie-Antoinette’s cell in the Conciergerie had little air, no heat, no lighting and was very humid. For breakfast she was served café au lait or hot chocolate with rye bread; at lunch she had soup, vegetables, chicken, duck or veal, and a dessert. Dinner was usually the noon leftovers. Her trial lasted for three exhausting days in October during which she was accused of everything from treason to incest. Finally, early in the morning of October 16, 1793, the verdict of guilty was announced. She was prepared for execution and, accompanied by her executioner, his assistant and a priest she climbed into an open cart drawn by two large white horses. At the Place de la Concorde (then called Place de la Révolution) she walked up the steps to the scaffold, politely excused herself for stepping on the foot of the executioner, and then, with all the grace she could muster, submitted resignedly to the guillotine.

After your visit you may want to admire the side of the building facing the Seine on the Quai de l’Horloge. So take the Boulevard du Palais and walk towards the Seine, turn right at the quai and continue to the next bridge, the Pont Notre-Dame. From here you have an excellent view of the Conciergerie and its four towers. On the left is the Tour de l’Horloge boasting one of the earliest clocks, this one dating from 1371 and still in working order. In the center are the Tour d’Argent and the Tour de César, both of which housed prisoners, as well as part of the royal treasury (strange bedfellows, indeed). On the far right is the Tour Bombée, or Bon-Bec, as it was familiarly called because the interrogation and torture carried out there made the prisoners talk (they opened their bec).

Now look directly across