Île de la Cité
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Île de la Cité

The Île de la Cité is where Paris began. It was settled in around 300 BC by a Celtic tribe, the Parisii, and the town that grew up was known as Lutetia. In 52 BC, it was overrun by Julius Caesar's troops. A natural defensive site commanding a major east–west river trade route, it was an obvious candidate for a bright future – the Romans garrisoned it and laid out one of their standard military town plans. While they never attached any great political importance to the town, they endowed it with an administrative centre, constructing a palace-fortress that became the stronghold of the Merovingian kings in 508, then of the counts of Paris, who in 987 became kings of France.

The Frankish kings set about transforming the old Gallo-Roman fortress into a splendid palace, of which the Sainte Chapelle and the Conciergerie prison survive today. At the other end of the island, they erected their most famous monument, the great cathedral of Notre-Dame. By the early thirteenth century the small Île de la Cité teemed with life, somehow managing to accommodate twelve parishes, not to mention numerous chapels and monasteries. Such was the level of activity that monks at one of the monasteries, the Saint-Magloire, found the island too noisy, moving out in 1138 to quieter premises on the right bank.

It takes some stretch of the imagination today to picture what this medieval city must have looked like, for nearly all of it was erased in the nineteenth century by Baron Haussmann, Napoléon III's Préfet de la Seine (a post equivalent to mayor of Paris) – some 25,000 people were displaced and ninety streets destroyed. In their place were raised four vast edifices in bland Baronial-Bureaucratik, largely given over to housing the law. Haussmann is also to thank for the windswept plaza, known as the parvis, in front of Notre-Dame, which at least has the virtue of allowing an uncluttered view of the facade. The few corners of the island that remain untouched by Haussmann include the square du Vert-Galant and place Dauphine, both delightful havens of calm.

The cathedral, Conciergerie and Sainte Chapelle inevitably attract large crowds and it's not unusual to have to queue for entry. Things are generally a bit quieter if you visit early in the morning or late afternoon.