Walls

This post will be a bit different; no photos at all! This is a preparation for what normally will follow next week. You have all the weekend to digest this one, if you have the courage!

My intention is to make a few posts about the « Grands Boulevards », meaning a number of avenues you can follow from Place de La Bastille to the Madeleine Church – or vice versa, via Place de la République, Opéra Garnier etc…. Along the “Grands Boulevards” you can find a lot of theatres, cinemas, restaurants…; Paris has not only one city centre for entertainment and nightlife, but several. These boulevards are following the trace of an ancient defence wall.

Before starting the “visit”, I thought it would be worthwhile to give a short history lesson (again). I have tried to trace on a Google map where the different Paris walls have existed. I’m afraid that only a few of you may possibly find this interesting, but I do it anyhow (sorry).

You can still find a few traces of the “Philippe-Auguste wall” built around 1200 in some older buildings and even part of the real wall (my post on “St.Paul etc…”).

This wall was replaced during the latter part of the 14th century. La Bastille was then part of the defence and some stones of La Bastille can still be found (my post on “La Bastille”).

In the beginning of the 17th century this wall was rebuilt and extended and became the “Louis XIII wall”. It did not last for long. The son of Louis XIII, Louis XIV, decided some decades later, in 1670, to demolish this wall, “open” the city… and replace the wall by the “Grands Boulevards”.

You would think that this was the end of the walls. However, a new wall, called “Fermiers Généraux”, was built 1785-88, but the reason was this time purely commercial; taxes to be paid at different gates. The “Fermiers Généraux” was a corporation of “tax farmers” who collected taxes for the monarchy, including on food, beverages, building material etc. brought into the city. Note that the wall was completed just before the Revolution, was hated by most of the habitants and that the tax collection was stopped immediately after the Revolution (and that most of the “tax farmers” were guillotined). The last traces of this wall had disappeared around 1860 in connection with the opening up of new large streets and boulevards (Haussmann).

The last wall, the “Thiers wall”, was built 1841-44 and now again for clear defence purposes. It was destroyed after World War I and replaced by some kind of ring road boulevards, “Boulevards Exterieurs”, also called the “Boulevards Maréchaux”, still today more or less following the Paris city limits.

I wish you a nice weekend! (Happy reading!)