2. Parvis de Notre Dame

(walk towards the Cathedral) 

 

A parvis is the plaza in front of a church. The one in front of the Notre Dame is now about four times the size of what it was in medieval Paris.Try to ignore the ugly display they've put up for the 850th anniversary of the Cathedral (I've cut it out of the photo because I feel it ruins the sight). Hopefully it'll be gone by next year. 

Make your way down to the Cathedral, elbowing through the multitude of tourists, and look around on the ground for a little bronze plaque that says Point Zero.

This is the official centre of the city. When you look up a distance to Paris, they're telling you the distance from this point. I was so fascinated by this that I kept stepping in and out of it, until I noticed people giving me funny looks.

You'll probably notice a large statue to your right, of Charles I "The Great" or Charlemagne. Most kings after Clovis weren't particularly impressive, and were given titles like "The Stammerer", "The Simple", "The Do Nothing", "The Mad", or (my personal favourite) "The Posthumous". Charles stood out, as is reasonably clear.

Charles, standing out.

His empire didn't last too long after he died. His grandkids divided it and apparently that was the foundation of Germany. At the time, the capital of the empire wasn't Paris, it'd been shifted to Aachen - closer to what's now Germany. Paris was still, however, a well known Cathedral town (it had both the St. Denis and the Notre Dame, impressive even now, so I'm not surprised). Through his many conquests, Charlemagne was apparently exposed to so much culture that he forced all churches to give lessons in reading, writing and basic arithmetic. All cathedrals, on the other hand, had to provide higher education: physics, theology, the lot. Much later, it was a bunch of teachers whose teachings got a little too radical for the Notre Dame that crossed over the river and founded the St. Genevieve university: the starting of what is now the Sorbonne.

If you're lucky - and you probably will be, if it's summer - you'll get to see people busking. Not all of them are good, I have to admit, but even so. This particular chap was from Spain (or so I gathered, given that he kept changing the lyrics of Englishman in New York to "Spanishman in Paris"). Towards the night on the walking bridge just behind the statue of Charlemagne, you'll probably see people roller-blading or - as I did in one rare occasion - people in afros dancing to Chaiyya Chaiyya.

Crossing over the square to the other side, you can get a view of the Hotel Dieu, the first hospital of Paris (in fact, if you read the Wikipedia article, it actually says it "was the first hospital in Paris until the Renaissance", which has left me a little confused). 

Constructed in 660 A.D, when poverty was a problem, the Hotel Dieu was very useful to the rich - who were faced with the awkward situation that the very things that had gotten them rich (or that being rich let them do) would also be responsible for their eternal damnation. So, supporting the hospital became a form of penance: buying your way into heaven, that sort of thing.

Interestingly, the view towards the poor soon changed, and by the 17th century, hospitals had turned into a sort of place to confine the poor and stop them from generally going around and showing people how poor they were. In fact, it was only by the 19th century that the place even started practising medicine, but hey better late than never.

A woodcut of what it must've looked like inside. Check out the dude using his mobile on the right. The sisters don't look pleased.

(Go back to the front of the Notre Dame and look contemplative)

Taking to the Streets

I really should get my act together, I said to myself, and so when Ritwika said she was coming over to Paris, I decided that whether she liked it or not she was going to see an interesting side to the city. Not, of course, that the city in itself wasn't interesting, but that in a sense Paris is overdone even before one's begun visiting it. Everyone's seen the Eiffel Tower, everyone's heard of the Notre Dame - even if, like me, your image of it was based on gargoyles and men with hunched backs jumping on bells - and thanks to Dan Brown everyone knows about the Louvre.

This was something that irritated me a bit, when I first got to the city. It seemed that the only interesting things were the things that were overdone. Also, while beautiful, it seemed at the time (wrongly, I might add) that the city was a little too homogeneous for my liking. The same type of buildings: nothing old, and more importantly, no contradictions. And it is from all this that I decided to do a little bit of snooping around to find stuff. So I'd like you to follow me on a little (preliminary) walk around Paris, with lots of (possibly erroneous) historical facts.

Look out for the little signs :)

1) Le Petit Pont  

(get off at the St. Michel-Notre Dame RER station and walk towards the Notre Dame)

This tiny bridge was probably one of the most important sites of Paris, back when crossing the river wasn't quite as easy as today. Being the narrowest point in the river, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to assume that the city grew around it, so to speak.

Paris started off as a village of Gaulish fisherfolk, called the Parisii, the earliest traces of whom date around 250 BC. They lived relatively blameless lives, until the Romans - doing what they did best - conquered them. The Romans set up a garrison camp (if you're imagining something out of Asterix, you wouldn't be too far off mark) which they called Lutetia (again, ring any Asterix-y bells?). The place evolved from a simple camp to a center of culture, with baths and temples and even an amphitheatre. This lasted for another 500 years or so, until the Germanic tribes from the north kept raiding the place and the Romans lost their stronghold. Towards the end of the Roman rule the city reverted to it's 'original' name, Paris.

So around the fifth century-ish, Paris was under the aegis of a germanic tribe called the Franks. Interestingly, the Hindi word Firangi - used to mean foreigner - comes from the Persian Farangi, in turn from the Arabic Faranji which can ultimately be traced back to the word Frank. (Apparently the "fr" sound isn't allowed in Arabic, and the -i was a sort of suffix to describe different ethnic groups.)

Clovis (the first) was the first King of the Franks. Up until it then the Franks were a bunch of unruly tribes, headed by their chieftains, until he unified them. He was also, interestingly, a Roman Catholic. He supposedly converted because his wife forced him to. Interestingly this helped him stand out from the large proliferation of other kings who seemed to be popping up everywhere. Back then Catholicism was a minority religion, and most Christians were Arian Christians. I hadn't heard about them before, but as far as I can tell, they separate Christ from God, and thus get rid of the idea of the trinity (you know, the father, son, holy spirit thing).

Clovis' legacy is an interesting one. Being not only the founder of Paris, in a sense, but also of a Catholic Paris. Interestingly, the name Louis, a modification of Clovis, was used (as I'm sure you know) by 18 kings. So he's done good, I'd say.

(Cross over the Petit Pont and walk towards the Notre Dame)