A chilly walk down Rue la Vivienne through the Royal Palais Gardens and through the Louvre courtyards led us to the Seine which we crossed at Pont Neuf (covered in padlocks expressing eternal love of couples) onto Ile de la Citie. A short walk led us to the Gothic masterpiece of Notre Dame Cathedral. Built on earlier churches and completed in 1163 this Cathedral was amongst the first to have flying buttresses. It has a history of important events including the coronation of Napoleon 1st but was sacked during the French Revolution and required extensive renovations. We attended the International Mass (1130) which was actually pretty much all in French. The church and courtyard was packed and felt like Paris's answer to St Peters. After Mass we strolled through the gardens behind the Cathedral and visited the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation on the eastern tip. This was a sombre spot built like a bunker and with architecture that felt like a prison . The memorial commemorates the 200,000 known French and foreign citizens who were deported during the Nazi period , many to their deaths in concentration camps. This place made me feel privileged to live today in Australia and sad for the tragedy of war and its innocent victims. most southern Afterwards we had a wonderful lunch in a little restaurant Ma Salle à manger on Place Dauphine , a small park on the northern tip of the island. I had snail and leek pie for entree - very tasty!
In front and beneath the courtyard of Notre Dame is a crypt museum tracing the history of Paris and the Ile de la Citie. It has extensive excavated ruins from the Gallic town Lutetia which was established on the Island and mainly the left bank and became Roman from 53 BC when Julius Caeser defeated the Gauls there. Lutetia was a thriving Roman town with a very large amphitheatre, 3 baths, courthouse, ramparts,port etc. The aqueduct brought water for the baths from 26 km away.
Over the centuries Lutetia was walled and provided protection against Germanic and Barbarian invaders though not the Vickings who sacked it. The history of the building of Notre Dame is also covered. A must see museum!
On the way back home we visited the Concierge which was a ryal palace and then prison complex during the French Revolution. This museum held many condemned prisoners who were guillotined inculding Marie Anointette. The museum covers a history of the reign of terror period of the revolution and lists all the known killed. This includes Antoine Lavoisier, a famous French chemist and physiologist, who discovered the chemical processes in respiration and the chemical equation in combustion of carbon and oxygen. I studied Lavoisier many years ago when doing a uni topic on the history and philosophy of science.
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