Description of the attraction
The Ile de la Cité is the historic center of Paris, its oldest part. A great city with two thousand years of history began from here.
For the first time, Julius Caesar mentions this place in the "Notes on the Gallic War" - the proconsul sent four legions here against the Parisian tribe, who had the fortified city of Lutetia on the "Sequana Island". Parisis, faced with the military superiority of the Romans, burned the city along with its bridges.
In the 1st century, when Gaul was annexed to Rome, the conquerors revived Lutetia. A Roman road passed through the island, along which troops and goods moved in the direction of Britain, the westernmost outpost of the empire. In the 3rd century, the threat of barbarian attacks forced the city to shrink in size and completely relocate to the Cité, under the protection of a defensive wall. In the IV century, the city on the island was first called Paris.
Around the same time, a Christian community emerged here. In a layer of soil under Notre-Dame-de-Paris, the ruins of the Basilica of Saint-Etienne - a church from the Merovingian times were found. At the beginning of the 6th century, the legendary Clovis I transferred the capital of the Frankish state to Paris, and Childebert I built the Basilica of St. Stephen here - in its place several centuries later, Notre Dame Cathedral would be erected. Robert II the Pious erects a royal palace on the Cité, and Saint Louis builds the Sainte-Chapelle chapel, in which he places the sacred relics taken by the crusaders from Constantinople.
The small island has amassed innumerable treasures century after century. By the time of the French Revolution, there were two dozen magnificent churches, palaces, old private houses here. But in the 19th century, the restless prefect of Paris, Baron Haussmann, decisively demolished all the buildings located between the royal palace and Notre Dame de Paris. New buildings of the police and commercial tribunal were rebuilt here, three straight streets were laid, continuing with bridges.
The new Cité is no longer the old medieval Cité. But he is still beautiful. It is connected with mainland Paris and the islet of Saint-Louis by nine bridges, from which beautiful panoramas open up. The architectural monuments of Cité - Notre-Dame Cathedral, Sainte-Chapelle, Conciergerie, Palais des Justice - attract tourists at any time of the year.
