Description of the attraction
The former royal castle of the Conciergerie, located on the Ile de la Cité near Notre Dame de Paris, can be called the oldest castle in Paris: it traces its ancestry back to the palace of the legendary Frankish king Clovis (508). However, little remained of the 6th century palace: the French kings were continuously completing and rebuilding the building, and it was badly damaged by fires.
For a significant part of its history, the castle was the official residence of French monarchs, and in this era there was an amazing plot: it was in the Conciergerie that the Russian queen of France Anna Yaroslavna, daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, lived.
In the 14th century, during an uprising, the townspeople broke into the castle and killed two royal advisers. After that, the Louvre became the seat of the monarch. A part of the royal administration remained in the Conciergerie, the management of the fortress was transferred to the royal concierge - this is how the current name of the building appeared.
There was a prison not far from the castle. When it overflowed, the functions of the prison were transferred to the Conciergerie. In 1391 the castle became a place of imprisonment for many centuries. During the revolution, those sentenced to death awaited their fate here. From here, having cut off her hair and sat down in a cart, Queen Marie Antoinette went to the scaffold. And from here the father of terror Maximilian Robespierre went to the guillotine.
The conciergerie had a reputation for being an extremely harsh prison. During the period of terror, several hundred people were stuffed into cells, criminals along with political and “suspicious” ones. In the Conciergerie Museum, you can see a list of prisoners sent from the local cells to the guillotine - there are 2,780 names in it.
Today the Conciergerie Castle is a museum part of the Palace of Justice complex. From the medieval construction of the Capetian era, there are only three towers left: Silver, Caesar's Tower and Bonbek. However, unusual rooms are well preserved: the Ratnikov Hall is the only example of civil Gothic architecture in Europe, the Gothic castle kitchen of the era of Jean the Good (XIV century), the Marie Antoinette chapel, located exactly on the spot where the queen's chamber was located.
