#Île de la cité

[famousinuniverse]

Le Pont Neuf, Paris, France: The Pont Neuf is the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine in Paris, France. It stands by the western point of the Île de la Cité, the island in the middle of the river that was, between 250 and 225 BC, the birthplace of Paris, then known as Lutetia and, during the medieval period, the heart of the city. Wikipedia

[ophierian-vp]

[eupat]

[fidjiefidjie]

Bonjour, bonne journée ☕️ 🐦

Marché aux oiseaux, Île de la Cité🗼Paris 1957

Photo de Peter Miller

[frenchcurious]

Place dauphine. - source Eric Thomas via PARIS CITY OF LOVE.

[margotonbeee]

Paris du bas Moyen-Âge

Hôtel de Sens (XVe s), Sainte-Chapelle (XIIIe siècle) et tourelle Rue Hautefeuille (reste de l'Hôtel des abbés de Fécamp) (début XVIe)

[thevagabondsbride-blog]

Sacred spaces

Saint Chapelle in Paris is a museum now, but once it was the place of worship for kings. It was built by Louis IX to house holy relics including what was believed to be the crown of thorns worn by Jesus on the cross.

The crown has been moved to a safer location, there are no more French kings and worship services are not held here anymore. You can still feel the echoes, even full of tourists there is a higher presence

This is the art that inspired William Morris and Gothic Revival

[vuesparisiennes]

Place Dauphine

Fotos de Paris, by Andrzej Foltyn

[scrapblring]

Sainte-Chappelle, Paris, France

Situated in the Ile-de-la-Cité, the Sainte-Chapelle is part of the Palais de la Cite, the residence of the royalty during the 10th to the 14th century.

It is one of the greatest examples of Gothic Architecture.

Built during 1242 and 1248, in accordance with the wishes of King Louis IX, it housed the collection of the relics of the Passion of Christ.

The 15 stained glass windows tell the story of mankind from Genesis to the Resurrection of Christ through 1.113 scenes.

The Rose Window above the entrance of the Upper Chapel depicts the Apocalypse of St. John.

Photo taken August 2024

[famousinuniverse]

Pont Neuf, Paris, France: The Pont Neuf is the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine in Paris, France. It stands by the western point of the Île de la Cité, the island in the middle of the river that was, between 250 and 225 BC, the birthplace of Paris, then known as Lutetia and, during the medieval period, the heart of the city. Wikipedia

[ophierian-vp]

[lecredo]

@mortange. / paris, 1790.

'chaos' was a paltry word for paris these days. the anniversary of the bastille's storming — now declared the fête de la fédération — loomed close on the horizon, but under the patriotic zeal and merriment, hunger still bit as fiercely as it had two years ago. even arno couldn't help but notice it in the patrons of the café. wine, compared to bread, was cheap, and it dulled the pangs of hunger — and so they came, and they drank, and they pretended life wasn't misery.

among them all, this stranger stood out. he'd come once or twice before, and never, at least within in arno's sight, had he touched a single drop of wine. it was enough to pique the assassin's interest. under the pretence of wiping the table down, he approached, and, with forced cheerfulness, he asked, "sure i can't fetch anything for you, citoyen?"

[vivelafranceblog]

Notre-Dame de Paris, Paris, France: Notre-Dame is reborn from its ashes. After five years of work and joint effort, made possible by national and international solidarity, this icon of resilience, art and history will once again shine in the heart of Paris... Notre-Dame de Paris, often referred to simply as Notre-Dame, is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, France. The cathedral, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, is considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture. Wikipedia

[kvetchlandia]

Jeff Pott Place Dauphine, Île de la Cité, Paris Oct. 8, 2018

[notwiselybuttoowell]

As crowds gather outside to gawp up at the freshly carved tracery and gleaming leadwork, however, they might not be aware that the most radical part of the entire project is actually right beneath their feet. The biggest impact on Paris will not be found in the rebuilt forêt of oak hidden away in the attic, or the ornamental rooftop cresting, but in how the fire has provided a catalyst to rethink the surrounding area as a model for climate-friendly public space on an increasingly scorching planet.

“The project of the cathedral was to rebuild it identically,” says Patrick Bloche, first deputy mayor of Paris, as he stands outside Notre Dame’s freshly scrubbed facade, puffing on his pipe. “On the other hand, outside the building, we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to completely reimagine what the surroundings could be.”

In the days following the fire, there was much enthusiasm among a certain cast of architects about what form a new-look Notre Dame might take. Norman Foster imagined crowning the charred nave with a vaulted glass roof and a spire topped with an observation deck – “a work of art about light,” he declared, which would “capture the confident spirit of the time”. Others proposed glitzy roofs made of Baccarat crystal, or a memorial spire in the shape of a gigantic golden flame. Thankfully, such hubris was ditched for a faithful reconstruction, but the fragmented and congested surroundings offered scope for a bolder approach.

“The area around Notre Dame has changed so much throughout history,” says Bas Smets, the Belgian landscape architect who won an open competition to redesign the area around the cathedral in 2022. “It’s like a privileged witness of a city looking for its form. The question now is what kind of spaces we need for the city of tomorrow.”

On Friday 29 November, Smets was first in line to explain his vision to Macron, on the president’s first visit to inspect the reborn Notre Dame, before its official inauguration tomorrow. They stood on the first completed piece of the “petit parvis”, the forecourt in front of the cathedral, which Smets plans to expand to mirror the full length and width of the building, with grooved limestone flags reflecting the chequerboard marble floor inside.

His plan – to be completed by 2027 at a cost of €50m, funded by the city – will create a much more open setting for the cathedral, encouraging visitors to explore more of the Île de la Cité at a slower pace, beyond just queueing up for a peek inside Notre Dame before hot-footing it to the Eiffel Tower. The new spaces will prioritise people over vehicles, seeing roads closed and pedestrianised, and reconnect the cathedral to the Seine for the first time in generations, with a new 400 metre-long riverside promenade. Plenty of shade will be provided by 160 new drought-tolerant trees, which will also help to shield queueing visitors from winter winds, while the hottest days will be relieved by an ingenious air-cooling water feature – with a splash of fun.

“We were inspired by seeing how they clean the streets of Paris,” says Smets, whose team includes the French urban planning agency GRAU and heritage specialists Neufville-Gayet. The city is unusual in having a dual water network, one for drinking water and another for untreated non-potable water, for irrigation, cleaning and firefighting – a 19th-century legacy of Baron Haussmann’s urban improvements. On hot summer days, the street-cleaning vans often leave this water running to cool down the roads and pavements. Learning from the locals, Smets has designed an 80 metre-long stretch of the plaza to be flooded with a thin 5mm-deep sheet of water on the hottest days, forming a reflecting pool that also provides evaporative cooling, lowering the air temperature by several degrees. Like the fountains of Kings Cross in London, it promises to be a popular place for a cooling splash – with enough space before the cathedral entrance, church wardens will be relieved to hear, for damp feet to dry off.

Given the expected 15 million visitors a year, one of the designers’ chief tasks was to improve crowd control, which Smets has partly addressed with a new entrance – dramatically punching new openings in the quay retaining wall facing the Seine. Enabling people to arrive by boat, this entrance will connect to a new visitor centre housed in a former 1960s underground car park, and provide a theatrical route up to the plaza, giving a worm’s-eye view of Notre Dame’s famous western facade for the first time.

Not all Parisians have welcomed these bold changes. An angry petition launched in April 2023, titled “Save Notre Dame gardens!”, gained more than 55,000 signatures, with concerns focused on the removal of fences around areas of lawn, as well as the removal of benches and flowerbeds, “completely distorting the spirit of the place”. Others opined that the scheme was “too British” in its plan to surround the cathedral with open gardens. Smets insists that some of the criticism was down to a misinterpretation of the plans – the historic benches, for example, will all remain – but the design has been altered to retain more of the fencing, only removing a section to open up the riverside path. “It became a political thing,” he says. “In the competition, we were asked to take out the fences, so we did. But keeping the fence, for me, is totally fine. We’re actually returning the situation to how it was in 1848, with a fence around the gardens, but not blocking access to the Seine.”

With an eye on Paris’s wider urban greening efforts, which have been a chief hallmark of socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo’s tenure, the project will also act as a laboratory for future landscaping work elsewhere in the city. While the main plaza will see an existing avenue of horse chestnut trees extended along the street, encouraging people to take a full circuit around the cathedral, a former car parking area to the east will become an experimental arboretum of different species.

“We imagine it as a living climatic laboratory,” says Smets, “to see how well different trees perform over time.” After the city’s plane trees suffered from beetle infestations, and others have been stricken by drought, the pressure is on to determine which varieties will thrive in the rapidly changing climate. “This is such an important, symbolic site,” he adds. “But it is also an opportunity to reimagine public space as a way to create a better outdoor microclimate – looking to the past to inform the city of the future.”

[richwall101]

Wonderful Photograph of Notre-Dame de Paris by Julia-Anna Gospodarou

Notre-Dame de Paris (meaning "Our Lady of Paris"), often referred to simply as Notre-Dame, is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité (an island in the River Seine), in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, France. The cathedral, dedicated to the Virgin Mary ("Our Lady"), is considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture. Several attributes set it apart from the earlier Romanesque style, including its pioneering use of the rib vault and flying buttress, its enormous and colourful rose windows, and the naturalism and abundance of its sculptural decoration. Notre-Dame is also exceptional for its three pipe organs (one historic) and its immense church bells.

The construction of the cathedral began in 1163 under Bishop Maurice de Sully and was largely completed by 1260, though it was modified in succeeding centuries. In the 1790s, during the French Revolution, Notre-Dame suffered extensive desecration; much of its religious imagery was damaged or destroyed. In the 19th century, the cathedral hosted the coronation of Napoleon and the funerals of many of the French Republic's presidents. The 1831 publication of Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris (English title: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) inspired interest which led to restoration between 1844 and 1864, supervised by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. On 26 August 1944, the Liberation of Paris from German occupation was celebrated in Notre-Dame with the singing of the Magnificat. Beginning in 1963, the cathedral's façade was cleaned of soot and grime. Another cleaning and restoration project was carried out between 1991 and 2000, A fire in April 2019 caused catastrophic damage, closing the cathedral for repairs and rebuilding over a 5 year period, the fully restored cathedral reopened in December 2024

Image by Juila-Anna Gospodarou