Today in Europe there are many cities that have retained their appearance unchanged for many centuries - Siena, Bruges, the upper city of Bergamo and so on. However, if we go back five to eight centuries ago, then it will be absolutely impossible to recognize the capital of France, known to almost everyone - since the High Middle Ages, Paris has changed so radically that if one of the subjects of King Philip the Fair were in it now, he would not recognize his hometown and decided that he was being deceived. All that remains by the XXI century in Paris from the former glorious times is the general geography, the course of the Seine, the Montmartre hill and several dozen historical buildings. Even the Louvre, the seat of the kings of France, now looks completely different than in the Middle Ages.
Fortress walls
Here we will not consider the most famous inner-city fortress of Paris - the Bastille - as belonging to later times. The Bastille was built after the epidemic of the Black Death in 1370-1381 and does not belong to the "classical" Middle Ages, but to the early modern times.
It must be remembered here that the ancient Lutetia Parisiorum, first mentioned by Julius Caesar in the "Notes on the Gallic War", was located on the island of Site and, presumably, was not surrounded by a wall. The town was connected to the banks of the Seine by wooden bridges, which could be burned in the event of an attack from outside. The first fortifications appear in the 3rd century AD, when the Roman Empire began to decline, and Gaul was under the threat of invasion by Germanic tribes. The right bank of the river was considered unsuitable for construction due to its swampiness, which was reflected in toponymy - suffice it to mention the Marais quarter, "swamp". In turn, on the left bank in the era of late antiquity, a city began to grow, abandoned approximately after 280: due to the threat of barbarian invasions, its inhabitants preferred to settle in Site,under the natural protection of the river. Since the beginning of the 4th century, the first stone wall appears on the eastern side of the island, made of blocks without the use of mortar or cement - the material for it was taken from ancient Roman buildings, in particular the "arenas of Lutetia". According to modern estimates, the wall was about two meters high and was two and a half meters thick at the base. The bridges, located on the site of modern Petit-Pont and Grand-Pont, were covered by log towers from the side of Site.located on the site of modern Petit-Pont and Grand-Pont, log towers were covered from the side of Site.located on the site of modern Petit-Pont and Grand-Pont, log towers were covered from the side of Site.
Plan of Paris in the early 9th century.
Over the next several centuries, Paris was repeatedly attacked and destroyed, but it was always rebuilt - it was a very convenient place to control the navigation on the Seine. During the Viking era, the Scandinavians more than once climbed up the river to the city itself - attacks followed each other in 845, 856, 857, 866 and 876, but were repulsed. A long siege of Paris by the Vikings followed in 885–887. By this time, wooden fortifications had appeared on both banks of the Seine, built under the Emperor Charles the Bald - later they would become known as the Great and Small Fortresses, Grand-Châtelet and Petit-Châtelet.
Only from 1190 a well-developed program for the construction of fortifications around the city appears - the construction of walls with numerous gate-towers, the Parisians owe to King Philip II Augustus, a prudent, economic monarch who wanted to protect his beloved Paris from a possible attack from the English Plantagenets, who then owned Normandy - erected by Richard Lionheart, the grandiose Chateau Gaillard castle was located just a hundred kilometers from Paris, that is, the British could approach the capital in a matter of days.
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Philip Augustus considered the defense of the right bank a priority. The construction of the wall with a length of 2600 meters on this side was carried out from 1190 to 1209 - by this time the swamps were drained by the labors of the Knights Templar, who were given a significant piece of land on the right bank. The left-bank part of the wall was built from 1200 to 1215 - finally, Paris began to acquire an established look, which will remain almost unchanged for the next four hundred years. Where the walls adjoined the river, the same type of "large Parisian towers" were built - each 25 meters high and 10 meters in diameter. Among them was the Tower of Nels, known to most readers from the series of novels by Maurice Druon "Cursed Kings". It was located on the left bank, where the Malake embankment is now, near the present Carrusel Bridge.
Nelskaya tower. Reconstruction by the architect Viollet-le-Duc, 19th century.
In the same years, the Louvre castle appears - the land for construction outside the city walls Philip Augustus bought from the Bishop of Paris. As we have already mentioned, this battle castle, capable of withstanding a long siege, had nothing to do with the modern Louvre. It was practically a square structure measuring 78 by 72 meters, with a powerful citadel in the center, ten defensive towers around the perimeter and a wide moat. At the time of Philippe Augustus, the Louvre was a purely utilitarian structure - cold, uncomfortable and completely uncomfortable; the king's residence remained on the island of Cité, in the Conciergerie castle, which was considered one of the most beautiful palaces in Europe.
Nevertheless, in the event that the enemy penetrated the city walls and captured Paris itself, the Louvre castle could hold out for at least a year, waiting for the arrival of reinforcements. For its era, it was a masterpiece of fortification art, where all modern achievements in this area were applied, including the mashikuli adopted from the Saracens - hinged loopholes designed for vertical shelling of the enemy. The citadel was an exceptionally solid structure - 32 meters high, 16 meters in diameter, and the wall thickness at the base of 4.5 meters. Unfortunately, now almost nothing has remained of the medieval Louvre - the castle of Philip Augustus was partially demolished in the 16th century for the construction of a Renaissance palace, the remains of the northern wall were dismantled under Louis XIII, and today you can only see the foundations of the ancient walls in the basements of the museum.
Louvre castle at the end of the 14th century. Later reconstruction.
If a medieval Parisian walks along the banks of the Seine from the Louvre to the Ile de Cité, he will see two more inner city fortifications. When stone bridges appeared in the city, the access to them had to be protected by two fortresses - Grand-Chatelet from the north and Petit-Chatelet from the south. Actually, a stone Small Bridge leads to the island from Petit-Chatelet, the tower, as it was built in 1130, remained unchanged until demolition in 1782, the only reconstruction took place under King Charles V in 1369, when Petit-Chatelet was decided to overhaul (the fortress suffered from flooding). In subsequent eras, the fortress lost its military significance and was used as a prison. In the Grand-Châtelet, on the opposite bank, since the time of Philippe Augustus, the seat of the Parisian provost, the court and the police were located. Later, the Great Chatelet was also demolished, the fortress was dismantled for ten years,from 1792 to 1802.
Temple Castle
The first House of the Order of the Temple in Paris appeared in 1139-1146, when the pious King Louis VII (who became famous mainly thanks to his wife, Duchess of Aquitaine Elienore Poitou) presented the young Order with a plot on the right bank - a place not the most successful, swampy and unhealthy. Nearby (closer to the river) were the churches of Saint-Jean-en-Greve and Saint-Gervais, that is, approximately the location of the first Templar residence can be tied to the space now limited by the streets of Rivoli, Vieille du Temple and Archives. Not a single image of the Old Temple has survived, but according to the description of Matthew of Paris, the tower resembled Petit-Chatelet, the usual architecture of the era is a rather gloomy square box with narrow loopholes.
General panorama of the New Temple from the times of Philip the Beautiful. On the left is the Temple tower, in the center is the church, on the right is the Caesar tower. View from the south-east, in the background the Mount of the Martyrs (Montmartre) and the silhouette of the church of the abbey of Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre.
Templars turned out to be stubborn people and over the course of a century they drained swamps, planted gardens and built infrastructure: mills, warehouses, stables, etc. They drained and reclaimed the quarter located between the rue Verrerie in the south, Beranger in the north, Temple in the west, and Vieille du Temple in the east. After the acquisition in 1203-1204. two censors, one of which was located east of rue Vieille du Temple (rue Ecouff, rue Rosier, rue Pave), and the other north of rue Verrerie (Saint-Croix-de-la-Bretonnery), the enclave of the order acquired finished look. It was surrounded by walls and protected by privileges - in particular, all the servants of the Temple were not under the jurisdiction of the royal secular power. Inside, the Templars erected a magnificent church modeled on the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (with a rotunda and a basilica) and two donjons. One of them, Caesar's donjon, dates back to the 12th century,and the second - the keep of the Temple - in the second half of the 13th century. These towers were built on the site where the square is now located, which overlooks the mayor's office of the third administrative district.
Initially, the Temple complex was located outside the walls of Philip Augustus, but Paris was expanding due to the appearance of new suburbs, their entire population would have been impossible to hide in the city in the event of a siege. With the start of the Hundred Years War, it became absolutely clear that the previous fortifications were completely insufficient, and under King Charles V, the construction of a new perimeter of the walls began. The city limits include the Temple and the Louvre, the area of the walled area increases from the former 253 hectares to 400 hectares, Paris is becoming a real metropolis with a population of about 150 thousand people.
It should be noted separately that the Temple Tower was the tallest building in Paris (57 meters), and the land belonging to the Templars was compared in area with the Island of Cité. Next to Greve Square on the Seine was the Templar Harbor with a colossal cargo turnover - by the beginning of the 13th century, the spiritual knightly order departed from its main functions of protecting the Holy Sepulcher and turned into an extensive commercial and banking company, quite capable of financing the construction of such grandiose structures as the Temple Tower … When Philip IV the Handsome decided to deal with the Templars - it is still not clear, for political or financial reasons - the king's "police action" could be thwarted: the Parisian Temple was able to defend itself for a very long time. However, the Templars showed no resistance, and the entire complex belonging to the Templarswas captured by the king's men in one night. After the defeat of the Order, the economy passed to the Hospitallers and was known in subsequent eras as the "Temple Abbey", and the tower passed into the possession of the kings of France.
The Templars were built carefully and skillfully, the Temple tower stood for 588 years, almost not undergoing reconstruction. Perhaps it would have survived to this day, but Napoleon Bonaparte in 1808 ordered the dismantling of the ancient building for ideological reasons: it was in the Temple that the former King Louis XVI, the Dauphin and Queen Marie Antoinette were kept before the execution - for the royalists the tower became a symbol. The dismantling work lasted two years, and to date, no traces of the Temple have remained in Paris, except for the names of the quarter and streets.
Probably one of the last images of the Temple. Deposed King Louis XVI walks along the north wall. Painting of the late 18th century.
In the XII-XIV centuries, the capital of the French kingdom was not the most convenient city - dense buildings, due to the tightness within the city walls, numerous towers, four fortresses. Everything was subordinated to one goal - defense from an external enemy. The face of the city began to change during the time of Bonaparte and became completely unrecognizable during the reign of Napoleon III, when the prefect of the Seine district, Baron Georges Eugene Haussmann, began to redevelop Paris - starting in 1854, more than 60 percent of medieval buildings were destroyed and boulevards were laid. The old network of Parisian streets has disappeared forever - as have the old Louvre, Grand-Châtelet, Petit-Chatelet and Temple.
Andrey Martyanov