The Wall of Philip Augustus & Village Saint-Paul
Why is it significant?
Along rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul, a school sports ground is fenced in by a long, grey, battered wall of rough stone, with the stumps of two round towers, and teenagers play sport in its shadow. That wall is more than eight hundred years old.
Key Facts
| Place | The Wall of Philip Augustus & Village Saint-Paul |
|---|---|
| Address | Rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul, 75004 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.85380, 2.36060 |
| Part of Walk | Princes, Rebels and the Pletzl: The Marais of Paris, from Hôtel de Ville to Bastille |
| Generated | Generated |
Along rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul, a school sports ground is fenced in by a long, grey, battered wall of rough stone, with the stumps of two round towers, and teenagers play sport in its shadow. That wall is more than eight hundred years old.
In 1190, before leaving on the Third Crusade, King Philip Augustus ordered the people of Paris to surround their city with a wall, so that it would be safe while he was away fighting in the Holy Land. The right-bank section, the one in front of you, went up first, and within a quarter of a century the wall ran right round both banks of the Seine: about five kilometres of stone, with dozens of towers and fortified gates. For the first time, Paris had a shape.
The city soon outgrew it. Houses were built against both sides, using the wall as a back wall, a cellar, a staircase, and for centuries it simply disappeared inside the buildings. Fragments still survive all over central Paris, hidden in courtyards, car parks and basements. But this is the longest stretch still standing in the open, revealed when the old houses around it were cleared in the twentieth century.
The street name remembers the gardens that once stretched here, beside the parish church of Saint-Paul and the vast royal residence of Saint-Pol, where King Charles the Fifth kept lions, aviaries and orchards in the fourteenth century. Tradition says that François Rabelais, the great comic writer of the French Renaissance, died in 1553 in a house on this street and was buried in the old cemetery of Saint-Paul, which has long since vanished.
Now cross the street and slip through one of the passageways into Village Saint-Paul: a maze of linked courtyards, restored in the 1970s, full of antique dealers, small galleries and designers' workshops. Wander through to rue Saint-Paul, follow it north to rue Saint-Antoine, turn right, and look for the grand stone gateway of number 62.