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With the Palais de Justice on your right, walk up the short rue de Harlay and turn right. The Conciergerie will be on your right along the Quai de l’Horloge (with its entrance around the corner at No. 2 Boulevard du Palais). A distinctly medieval-looking fortress, this vast building with its towers facing the Seine was once a notorious prison. During the Revolution, hundreds of prisoners were taken from here to be executed by guillotine. It actually began life as a royal palace and still forms part of the vast Palais de Justice complex.
Originally occupied by Romans, this part of the Ile de la Cité was subsequently occupied by a Merovingian palace. This was massively extended and fortified by St Louis and Philippe IV (Philip the Fair – meaning good-looking) in the 13th and 14th centuries, with Louis adding the magnificent Sainte-Chapelle around the corner. Philippe was responsible for the turreted facade overlooking the river.
The Conciergerie’s Grande Salle (great hall) was one of the largest in Europe, and its lower storey, La Salle des Gens, still survives today. Meauring 64 metres (210 feet) long, 27.5 metres (90 feet) wide and 8.5 metres (28 feet) high, it used to be the dining room for the palace staff, but was also occasionally used for banquets and judicial proceedings.
Charles V abandoned the palace in 1358 when he moved the court to the Louvre, but the palace continued to serve in an administrative capacity, as home to the chancellery and the French parliament. It was converted into a prison in 1391. As was usual for the time, prisoners who could afford to do so would get a private cell and better food. Poorer people had to make do with simply furnished cells called pistoles, while the very poor, known as pailleux (from the hay or paille they slept on) were confined to hideous little holes called oubliettes where they were often forgotten about – oubliette literally means ‘forgotten about’.
The Conciergerie gained its reputation for grimness during the Revolution, when it became known as the ‘antechamber to the guillotine’. It held as many 1,200 prisoners, both male and female, at any one time. It was also home to the feared Tribunal, which sat in the Grande Salle between 1793 and 1795 and condemned a staggering 2,600 people to the guillotine, the most famous being Queen Marie-Antoinette and Charlotte Corday (the murderer of the Revolutionary leader Marat, whom she killed in his bath).
In the 19th century the Conciergerie continued to be used as a prison, but Marie-Antoinette’s former cell was converted into a sort of shrine. Decommissioned as a prison in 1914, the Conciergerie is now open to the public – although only a small part of this vast complex is accessible as it is also home to the Paris law courts. Both the Conciergerie and the Palais de Justice were refurbished in the mid-19th century, which completely altered their appearance. The former may look like a brooding medieval fortress, but this only dates back to 1858 when it was ‘restored’ by Viollet-le-Duc.
Three towers survive from the medieval era, the Caesar Tower, the Silver Tower and the Bonbec (‘good beak’) Tower (which got its name from the
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