One of the maquette captions tells me that in the 12th century, the swamps (les marais) around the fortress were drained to create more farmland and to allow the town to expand. No doubt the draining was also carried out to avoid a repeat of the disastrous floods of the Seine banks that led many Parisians, including the King himself, to wonder whether God had afflicted the city with the second Biblical Deluge. Clusters of dwellings developed into faubourgs -- and are labelled as such on the medieval maps of Paris, some of which you can see in the exhibit (you can see early faubourgs right outside the city walls on the Braun and Hogenberg map, above). A quick search reveals that the word comes not from faux-bourg ("false town"), as I had supposed, but rather from the Latin foris burgum ("outside the city"). The etymological dictionary specifies that "traditionally, this name was given to an agglomeration forming around a throughway leading outwards from a city gate, and usually took the name of the same thoroughfare within the city." (Hence present-day boulevards with names like Faubourg Saint-Honoré -- once a self-contained little village just outside Philippe Auguste's city wall) Eventually, as the population increased, these little Medieval suburbs were swallowed up by the growing city.
Aside from the great monuments, very little of Medieval Paris is left. When Baron Haussmann, the 19th century "civic planner" hired by Napoleon to modernize Paris, went about retrofitting the city by widening its boulevards, he destroyed all traces of the medieval town -- or rather, almost all. If you cross from the Ile de la Cite toward the Marais, you will come across a strangely quiet area of winding streets – a village at the old heart of the city. This is Village Saint Paul (it still calls itself “village” despite being surrounded by some of the most tourist-clogged streets in all of Paris).
The remnants of the medieval wall in Village St Paul
The whimsical layout of the streets (and, overlooking a playground, vestiges of the old town wall) hint at the neighborhood’s medieval origins. But in addition, at the corner of Rue François Miron and Rue Cloche Percé there are two surviving specimens from the era: a pair of 14th century buildings with wood beams and pitched roofs. A sign on each gives its name: “Maison a l’Enseigne du Mouton” (The House of the Sign of the Lamb) and its slightly shorter sister, “Maison a l’Enseigne du Faucheur" (The House of the Sign of the Harvester). The two buildings almost miraculously survived the many fires, political uprisings and world wars – as well as the wear and tear of time (later I read here that the authenticity of the architecture has been disputed, since both houses were extensively renovated in the 1960s).
Maison a l’Enseigne du Mouton and Maison a l’Enseigne du Faucheur, in Village Saint Paul (Marais, Paris)
In the afternoon I cross from Village Saint Paul north to the busy Marais neighborhood, stopping to sample the macarons that beckon devilishly from the bakery windows. Now and then I peek the displays of real state brokers. Like many New Yorkers, I have become a seasoned player of this semi-masochistic game, ogling real estate ads for places I could never afford. Like wedding announcements from the local paper, real estate ads give up invaluable insight into local society – as well as awe and/or amusement. But imagine my surprise when I notice among the one-bedrooms in Montparnasse andstudios in Saint Germain the following ad:
I do a double-take, realizing that one of the last pieces of medieval Paris is up for sale – and can be yours for the paltry sum of, er, 350,000 euros.
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