Le Vieux Paris
Walking the Île de la Cité
Where else to begin exploring Paris, but where the city began? Walking through the Île de la Cité covers some 4000 years of civilisation, from when the first Gauls settled here, to those living statues who daily pose outside Notre-Dame for tourists.
Paris began her life on a boat-shaped island in the middle of the Seine. The city’s coat of arms proudly displays a boat tossed by the waves, above the motto fluctuat nec mergitu: She is tossed by the waves but does not sink. By the 3rd century BCE, the Parisii tribe had established a fortified settlement on what was to become the Île de la Cité, although other Celtic tribes had lived here from at least 2000 BCE. (Canoes dating back to almost 4000 BCE have been found on the banks the Seine.)
The Parisii chose well: a temperate valley of fertile lands, with a river not only full of fish but perfect for trading from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean. Beneath the surrounding hills lay stores of lime and gypsum — now known as plaster of Paris — later used to build La Ville Lumière. So strategic a site, in fact, Julius Caesar invaded in 52 BCE, establishing a major Roman town — Lutetia (Lutèce) — which flourished…
