Paris in the 17th century

Cardinal Mazarin in the gallery of his palace, by Robert Nanteuil (1659)

Richelieu died in 1642, and Louis XIII in 1643. At the death of his father, Louis XIV was only five years old, and his mother, Anne of Austria, became Regent. Richelieu's successor, Cardinal Mazarin, decreed a series of heavy new taxes upon the Parisians to finance the ongoing war. A new law in 1644 required those who had built homes close to the city walls to pay heavy penalties; in 1646 new tax was imposed on the middle-class to finance a loan to the state of 500,000 pounds, and taxes were imposed on all fruits and vegetables brought into the city. In 1647, a new law required that those who had built homes on property officially belonging to the King would have to re-purchase the rights to the land. In 1648, Mazarin informed the noble members of three of the highest civil councils in the city, the Grand Council, the Chambre des comptes and the Cour des Aides that they would not be paid any salary for the next four years. These measures caused a rebellion within the Parlement of Paris, which was not an elected assembly but a high court made up of prominent noblemen. On May 13, 1648, the Parlement called a meeting in the Chambre Saint-Louis, the main hall of the Palace on the île de la Cité, to "reform the abuses of the State".[11]

The Fort royal was constructed in the gardens of the Palais-Cardinal to teach the young Louis XIV about the art of fortifications

Faced with the united opposition of the leaders of Paris, Mazarin backed down and accepted many of their proposals, and waited for an opportunity to strike back. The victory of the French army led by Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé over the Spanish at the Battle of Lens gave him the opportunity he needed. An arranged a special mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with the presence of the young King, to celebrate the victory, and brought soldiers into the city to line the street for the procession before the ceremony. As soon as the ceremony at Notre-Dame concluded, Mazarin had three prominent members of the Parlement arrested.

When news of the arrests spread around Paris, riots broke out in the streets, and more than twelve hundred barricades were erected on the Île de la Cité, near the Place de Greve, les Halles, around the University, and in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. There were several violent confrontations in the streets between soldiers and the Parisians. The leaders of the Parlement were received at the Palais-Royal, where Anne of Austria and the young King were living, and she agreed, after some hesitation, to release the imprisoned member of the Parlement.

This was the beginning of the Fronde, a long struggle between Mazarin and the Parlement of Paris and its supporters, and then between Mazarin and two princes of the royal family. The signing of the Peace of Westphalia on May 15, 1648, ending the Thirty Years' War, allowed Mazarin to bring his army, led by the Prince of Condé, back toward Paris. On the night of 5–6 January, Mazarin, the Regent and the young king were smuggled out of Paris to the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The Parlement declared Mazarin a public enemy and called upon the Parisians to take up arms. The arrival of the royal army under de Condé put down the first uprising, but the struggle between Mazarin and the Parlement continued. On the night of February 6–7, Mazarin, in disguise, left Paris for Le Havre. On February 16, Condé, the commander of the royal army, changed sides and demanded to be the leader of the Fronde. The Fronde quickly split into rival factions, while Mazarin did not have the funds to raise an army to defeat it. The standoff between Mazarin and the Fronde continued from 1648 until 1653. At times, the young Louis XIV was held under virtual house arrest in the Palais-Royal. He and his mother were forced to flee the city twice to the royal château at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Cavaliers of the Fronde and the royal army battle outside the walls of Paris (1852)

In 1652, Mazarin made the error of enlisting seven to eight thousand German mercenaries with his own money to fight against the French army. The Fronde rose again, this time led by two prominent nobles, the Prince de Condé, Gaston, Duke of Orléans, the Governor of Paris and the younger brother of the King, against Mazarin. At the beginning of May, the royal army of Turenne defeated the Frondeurs under Condé at Étampes, not far from Paris; they fought again at Saint Denis April 10 and 12. The Parlement refused to allow Condé and his soldiers into the city. On July 2, Condé's soldiers fought the royal army just outside the city, beneath the walls of the Bastille, and were defeated. Condé managed to bring the remains of his army into Paris. He summoned the Parlement and leading merchants and clergy, and demanded to be recognized as the leader of the city. The leaders of the Parlement and the merchants of Paris, along with representatives of the clergy, assembled at the Hôtel de Ville and rejected Condé's proposal; they simply wanted the departure of Mazarin. The soldiers of Condé, furious, attacked the assembly, killing some of the members, further alienating the Parisians.[12]

On August 19 Mazarin withdrew to Bouillon in the Ardennes and continued his intrigues to win back Paris from there. Rising prices and the scarcity of food in Paris made the government of Frondeurs more and more unpopular. On September 10, Mazarin encouraged the Parisians to take up arms against Condé. On September 24, a large demonstration took place outside the Palais-Royal, demanding the return of the King. Gaston d'Orleans changed sides, turning against Condé. On September 28, the leaders of Paris sent a delegation to the King asking him to return to the city, and refused to pay or feed the soldiers of Condé camped in the city. Condé abandoned Paris on October 14 and took refuge in the Spanish Netherlands. On October 22 the young King, at the Louvre, issued a decree forbidding the Parlement of Paris to interfere in affairs of state and the royal finances. Mazarin, victorious, returned to Paris on February 3, 1653 and took charge once again of the government.[13]

The Pont Neuf in the 1660s

As a result of the Fronde, Louis XIV had a profound lifelong distrust of the Parisians. He moved his Paris residence from the Palais-Royal to the more secure Louvre: then, in 1671, he moved the royal residence out of the city to Versailles, and came into Paris as seldom as possible.[14]

While he disliked the Parisians, Louis XIV wanted to give Paris a monumental grandeur that would make it the successor to Ancient Rome. The king named Jean-Baptiste Colbert as his new Superintendent of Buildings, and Colbert began an ambitious building program. To make his intention clear Louis XIV organised a carrousel festival in the courtyard of the Tuileries in January 1661, in which he appeared, on horseback, in the costume of a Roman emperor, followed by the nobility of Paris. Louis completed the Cour Carrée of the Louvre and built a majestic row of columns along its east façade (1670). Inside the Louvre his architect Louis Le Vau and his decorator Charles Le Brun created the Gallery of Apollo, the ceiling of which featured an allegoric figure of the young king steering the chariot of the Sun across the sky. He enlarged the Tuileries Palace with a new north pavilion, built a magnificent new theater, the Théâtre des Tuileries, attached to the palace, and had André Le Nôtre, the royal gardener, remodel the gardens of the Tuileries into a French formal garden. But another ambitious project, an exuberant design by Bernini for the eastern facade of the Louvre, was never built; it was replaced by a more severe and less expensive colonnade, whose construction proceeded very slowly due to a lack of funds. Louis turned his attention more and more to Versailles.[15]

On February 10, 1671, Louis departed Paris and made his permanent residence in Versailles. In the remaining forty-three years of his reign, he visited Paris just twenty-four times for official ceremonies, usually for no longer than twenty-four hours. While he built new monuments to his glory, the king also took measures to prevent any form of opposition to his will. On March 15, 1667, he named Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie to a new position, the Lieutenant General of Police, with the function of making the city work more efficiently, but also to suppress any opposition or criticism of the king. The number of policemen was quadrupled. Anyone who circulated a pamphlet or flyer critical of the king was subject to whipping, banishment and a sentence to the galleys. On 22 October the king revoked the Edict of Nantes and its promised religious tolerance for Protestants; on the same day demolition of the Protestant church at Charenton began. Repression of dissident sects resumed.[16]

Place des Victoires (about 1695)

Dedication of the statue of Louis XIV on Place Louis-le-Grand, now Place Vendôme (1699)

In his absence, his construction projects within Paris continued. Mazarin left funds in his will to build the Collège des Quatre-Nations (College of the Four Nations) (1662–1672), an ensemble of four baroque palaces and a domed church, to house sixty young noble students coming to Paris from four provinces recently attached to France (today it is the Institut de France). In the center of Paris, Colbert constructed two monumental new squares, Place des Victoires (1689) and Place Vendôme (1698). He built a new hospital for Paris, La Salpêtrière, and, for wounded soldiers, a new hospital complex with two churches, Les Invalides (1674). Of the two hundred million livres that Louis spent on buildings, twenty million were spent in Paris; ten million for the Louvre and the Tuileries; 3.5 million for the new royal Gobelins Manufactory and the Savonnerie, 2 million for Place Vendôme, and about the same for the churches of Les Invalides. Louis XIV made his final visit to Paris in 1704 to see Les Invalides under construction.[17]

The city continued to expand. In 1672, Colbert issued new lettres patentes to enlarge the formal boundaries of the city to the site of the future wall built by Louis XVI in 1786, the Wall of the Farmers General. The nobility built its townhouses in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, which expanded as far as Les Invalides. Louis XIV declared that Paris was secure against any attack, and no longer needed its old walls. He demolished the main city walls, creating the space which eventually became the Grands Boulevards. To celebrate the destruction of the old walls, he built two small arches of triumph, Porte Saint-Denis (1672) and Porte Saint-Martin (1676).

The last years of the century brought more unhappiness for the Parisians. In 1688, the king's grand design to dominate Europe was challenged by the new Protestant king of England, William of Orange, and by a new coalition of European countries. The war brought more taxation for the Parisians. In 1692–1693, the countryside was hit with poor harvests, causing widespread hunger in the city. In October 1693 the Lieutenant General of Police, La Reynie, built thirty ovens to bake bread for the poor of Paris. The bread was sold for two sous a loaf at the Louvre, the Place des Tuileries, the Bastille, the Luxembourg Palace, and on the rue d'Enfer. Crowds pushed and fought for a chance to buy bread. The terrible conditions were repeated in the winter of 1693–94. One diarist, Robert Challes, wrote that, at the height of the famine, between fourteen and fifteen hundred people of both sexes and all ages were dying daily of hunger and disease at the Hôtel de Dieu hospital and on the streets outside. At the end of March 1694, Madame de Sévigné wrote to friends that she had to leave the city; "there is no longer any way to live in the middle of the air and misery we have here."[18]

A Paris beggar, after an engraving by Jacques Callot

A large number of Parisians were elderly, sick, or unable to work because of injuries. They were the responsibility of the Catholic church in each parish; an official of the parish was supposed to keep track of them and provide them with a small amount of money. In times of food shortages, such as the famine of 1629, or epidemics, the church was often unable to take care of all of the needs of those in the parish. In the case of vagabonds, those who came to Paris from outside the city but had no profession or home, there was no structure to take care of them.

There were a very large number of mendiants, or beggars, on the streets of Paris. One estimate put their number at forty thousand at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIII.[22] It was particularly feared that beggars from other cities would bring infectious diseases into the city. There was an outbreak of bubonic plague in the city in 1631, and there were frequent cases of leprosy, tuberculosis and syphilis in Paris. The Parisians learned that Geneva, Venice, Milan, Antwerp and Amsterdam had chosen to confine their beggars in hospitals created for that purpose. In 1611, the Bureau of the City ordered that the vagabonds should be taken off the streets. Those who could not show they were born in Paris were required to leave the city. Those who were native Parisians were put to work. When the news of the decree spread, many of the vagabonds and beggars quickly departed the city. The police rounded up the rest, confined the men who were able to work in a large house in the faubourg Saint-Victor, and the women and children in another large house in faubourg Saint-Marcel. Those with incurable illnesses or unable to work were taken to a third house in the faubourg Saint-Germain. They were supposed to awake at five in the morning and to work from 5:30 in the morning until 7:00 in the evening. The work consisted of grinding wheat, brewing beer, cutting wood, and other menial tasks; the women and girls over the age of eight were employed by sewing. The city judged the program a success, and acquired three large new buildings for the beggars. But within four years the program was abandoned; the work was poorly organized, and many of the beggars simply escaped.[22]

The hardships and medical needs of the Paris poor were energetically addressed by one of the first Paris philanthropists, Theophraste Renaudot, a protégé of Cardinal Richelieu. Renaudot, a Protestant and a physician, founded the first weekly newspaper in France, La Gazette in 1631. Based on the newspaper, he founded the first employment bureau in Paris, matching employers and job-seekers. He organized public conferences on topics of public interest. He opened the first public pawn-shop in Paris, the mont-de-Pieté, so the poor could get money for belongings at reasonable rates. He also organized the first free medical consultations for the poor. This put him into opposition with the medical school of the University of Paris, which denounced him. After the death of his protectors, Richelieu and Louis XIII, the University had his medical license taken away, but eventually the University itself began to offer free medical consultations to the poor.[23]

A Fille de la Charité delivering soup and bread to the sick

Another pioneer in helping the Paris poor during the period was Vincent de Paul. As a young man, he had been captured by pirates and held as a slave for two years. When he finally returned to France, he entered the clergy and became chaplain to the French prisoners in Paris sentenced to the galleys. He had a talent for organization and inspiration; in 1629 he persuaded wealthy residents in the parish of Saint-Sauveur to fund and participate in charitable works for the poor of the Paris; with its success, he founded similar confréries for the parishes Saint-Eustache, Saint-Benoît, Saint-Merri and Saint Sulpice. In 1634, he took on a much more challenging task; providing assistance to the patients of the city's oldest and largest hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu, which was terribly overcrowded and under-funded. He persuaded wealthy women from noble families to prepare and distribute meat broth to the patients, and to help the patients with their needs. He instructed the women visiting the hospital to dress simply, and to speak to the poor with "humility, gentleness and cordiality." As time went on, he discovered that some of the wealthy women were delegating the servants to do the charitable work. In 1633, he founded a new charitable order for young women from more modest families, the Filles de la Charité, to carry on the work of feeding the poor. The young women, dressed in gray skirts and white cornettes, carried pots of soup to the poor of the neighborhoods. The first house of the order was at La Chapelle. Between 1638 and 1643, eight more houses of the order were opened to serve food to the poor.[24]

In 1638, he took on another ambitious project; providing food and care for the abandoned infants of Paris, the enfants trouvés. Four hundred unwanted babies were abandoned each year at the maison de la Couche, or maternity hospital, where most died in a very short time. There was only one nurse for four or five children, they were given laudanum to keep them from crying, and they were often sold to professional beggars, who used them to inspire pity and donations. In 1638, he persuaded wealthy Parisians to donate money to establish a home for found children on rue des Boulangers, near the porte Saint-Victor. De Paul and the sisters of the order made visits to churches to bring babies abandoned there at night to the new home. His work came to the attention of the King and Queen, who provided funding in 1645 to build a large new home for abandoned children near Saint-Lazare. De Paul died in 1660. In 1737, he was canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church.[25]

Caricature of the king of Paris thieves Cöesre, in the Courtyard of Miracles, by Lagniet (1663)

Beside the beggars and the poor there was another underclass in Paris, composed of thieves. They often were expert in cutting the cords of the purses that wealthy Parisians carried around their necks and running off with them. They also sometimes pretended to be blind or lame, so they could attract charity from the Parisians. In the 17th century the most famous residence of such thieves was the Cour des Miracles, or Courtyard of Miracles, located between rue Montorgueil, the convent of the Filles-Dieu, and rue Neuve-Saint-Saveur, in the center of the city. It was named because its residents often appeared to blind or lame when on the streets but were perfectly whole when they returned home. It was described by the 18th-century Paris historian Sauval,[26] based on his father's description of a visit to the Courtyard. "To enter there you have to descend a rather long slope, twisting and uneven. I saw a house half-buried in mud, crumbling with age and rot, which had only a fraction of its roof tiles, where however were lodged more than fifty families, with all their legitimate, illegitimate and undetermined children. I was assured that in this house and its neighbors there were more than five hundred large families living one on top of the other". The courtyard was a school of crime; the children were taught the best techniques for stealing purses and escaping, and were given a final examination of stealing a purse in a public place, such as the Cemetery of Saints-Innocents, under the scrutiny of their teachers. The Courtyard had its own King, laws, officers and ceremonies. The young inhabitants became expert in not only stealing, but also in simulating blindness, gangrene, rabies, and a wide variety of horrifying wounds and illnesses. In 1630, the city wanted to build a street through the Courtyard to connect rue Saint-Sauveur and rue Neuve-Saint-Sauveur, but the workmen were showered with rocks and assaulted and beaten by the residents of the Courtyard, and the project was abandoned.[27]

In 1668, shortly after being named Lieutenant-General of Police, de la Reynie decided to finally put an end to the Courtyard. He gathered one hundred fifty soldiers, gendarmes and sappers to break down the walls, and stormed the Courtyard, under a barrage or rocks from the residents. The inhabitants finally fled, and de la Reynie tore down their houses. The empty site was divided into lots and houses constructed. and is now part of the Benne-Nouvelle quarter. Sauval's description of the Courtyard was the source for Victor Hugo's courtyard of miracles in his novel Notre-Dame de Paris, though Hugo moved the period from the 17th century to the Middle Ages.[28]

Colbert visits the Gobelins tapestry workshop (1665).

With this royal encouragement, the financier Moisset launched an enterprise to make cloth woven with threads of gold, silver and silk. It failed, but was replaced by other successful ventures. The first tapestry workshop was opened, with royal assistance, in the Louvre, then at the Savonnerie and at Chaillot. The Gobelins' enterprise of dyers brought in two Flemish tapestry makers in 1601 and began to make its own tapestries in the Flemish style. Master craftsmen from Spain and Italy opened small enterprises to make high-quality leather goods. Workshops making fine furniture were opened by German craftsmen in the faubourg Saint-Antoine. A royal glass factory was opened 1601 in Saint-Germain-des-Prés to compete with Venetian glassmakers. A large factory was opened at Reuilly to produce and polish mirrors made by Saint-Gobain.[33]

A carpet made by the royal Savonnerie workshop for the Louvre

Under Louis XIV and his minister of finance, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the royal manufactories were expanded. The most skilled artisans in Europe were recruited and brought to Paris. In 1665, the enterprise of Hindret, located in the old château de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, produced the first French silk stockings. The Gobelins' workshops began to produce furniture for the royal residences as well as tapestries, while the Savonnerie Manufactory produced magnificent carpets for the royal palaces. The quality of the carpets, tapestries, furniture, glass and other products was unmatched; the problem was that it was nearly all destined for a single client, the King, and his new residence at Versailles. The royal manufactories were kept going by enormous subsidies from the royal treasury.[34]

The greatest resource of the Paris economy was its large number of skilled workers and craftsmen. Since the Middle Ages, each profession had had its own corporation, which set strict work rules and requirements to enter the profession. There were separate corporations for drapers, tailors, candle-makers, grocer-pharmacists, hat-makers, bonnet-makers, ribbon-makers, saddle-makers, stone carvers, bakers of spice breads, and many more. Doctors and barbers were members of the same corporation. Access in many professions was strictly limited to keep down competition, and the sons of craftsmen had priority. Those entering had to advance from apprentice to companion-worker to master worker, or maître. In 1637, there were 48,000 recorded skilled workers in Paris, and 13,500 maîtres.[35]

Gallery of shops in the Palais de Paris, by Abraham Bosse (1638)

The most important market for luxury goods was located on the Île-de-la-Cité, in the spacious gallery of the old royal palace, where it had been since at least the fourteenth century. The palace was no longer occupied by the King, and had become the administrative headquarters of the kingdom, occupied by the courts, the treasury, and other government offices. The small shops in the gallery sold a wide variety of expensive gowns, cloaks, perfumes, hats, bonnets, children's wear, gloves, and other items of clothing. Books were another luxury items sold there; they were hand-printed, expensively bound, and rare.

Clocks and watches were another important luxury good made in Paris shops. Access to the profession was strictly controlled; at the beginning of the 17th century, the guild of horlogers had twenty-five members. Each horloger was allowed to have no more than one apprentice, and apprenticeship lasted six years. By 1646, under new rules of the guild, the number of masters was limited to seventy-two, and the apprenticeship was lengthened to eight years. Most of the important public buildings, including the Hôtel de Ville and the Samaritaine pump, had their own clocks made by the guild. Two families, the Martinet and the Bidauld, dominated the profession; they had their workshops in the galleries of the Louvre, along with many highly skilled artists and craftsmen. Nearly all the clock and watchmakers were Protestants; when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, most of the horlogers refused to renounce their faith and emigrated to Geneva, England and Holland, and France no longer dominated the industry.[36]

At the beginning of the 17th century, the nobles and wealthy Parisians traveled by carriage, horse, or in a chair inside an elegant box carried by servants. In 1660, there were three hundred carriages in the city.

Less fortunate travelers had to go on foot. Paris could be crossed on foot in less than thirty minutes. However, it could be a very unpleasant walk; the narrow streets were crowded with carts, carriages, wagons, horses, cattle and people; there were no sidewalks, and the paving stones were covered with a foul-smelling soup of mud, garbage and horse and other animal droppings. Shoes and fine clothing were quickly ruined.

In about 1612 a new form of public transport appeared, called the fiacre, a coach and driver which could be hired for short journeys. The business was started by an entrepreneur from Amiens named Sauvage on the rue Saint-Martin. It took its name from the enseigne or hanging sign on the building, with an image of Saint Fiacre. By 1623, there were several different companies offering the service. In 1657, a decree of the Parlement of Paris gave the exclusive rights to operate coaches for hire to an ecuyer of the King, Pierre Hugon, the sieur of Givry. In 1666, the Parlement fixed the fare at twenty sous for the first hour and fifteen sous for each additional hour; three livres and ten sols for a half day, and four livres and ten sols if the passenger desired to go into the countryside outside Paris, which required a second horse. In 1669, fiacres were required to have large numbers painted in yellow on the sides and rear of the coach.

In January 1662 the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, the inventor of one of the first calculating machines, proposed an even more original and rational means of transport; buying seats in carriages which traveled on a schedule on regular routes from one part of the city to another. He prepared a plan and the enterprise was funded by three of his friends, and began service in March 1662. Each carriage carried eight passengers, and a seat in one cost five sols. The doors of the carriages had the emblem of the city of Paris, and the coachmen wore the city colors, red and blue. The coaches followed five different itineraries, including from rue Saint-Antoine to the Luxembourg by the Pont Neuf, from the Luxembourg to rue Montmartre, and a circular line, called "The Tour de Paris." Pascal's company was a great success at the beginning, but over the years it was not able to make money; after the death of Pascal, it went out of business in 1677.[42]

The fiacre remained the main means of public transport until well into the 19th century, when it was gradually replaced by the omnibus, the horse-drawn tramway, and the eventually by the motorized fiacre, or taxicab.[43]

At the beginning of the century, the streets of Paris were dark at night, lit only here and there with candles or oil lanterns. In 1662, the Abbé Laudati received royal letters of patent to establish a service providing torch-carriers and lantern-carriers for those who wanted to voyage through the streets at night. Lantern-bearers were located at posts eight hundred steps apart on the main streets, and customers paid five sols for each portion of a torch used, or for fifteen minutes of lantern-light. The company of torch and lantern bearers was in business until 1789.

In 1667, the royal government decided to go further, and to require the placement of lanterns in each quarter, and on every street and place, at the expense of the owners of the buildings on that street. In the first year, three thousand oil lanterns were put in place. The system was described by English traveler, Martin Lister, in 1698: "The streets are lit all winter and even during the full moon! The lanterns are suspended from in the middle of the street at a height of twenty feet and at a distance of twenty steps between each lantern." The lamps were enclosed in a glass cage two feet high, with a metal plaque on top. The cords were attached to iron bars fixed to the walls, so they could be lowered and refilled with oil. The King issued a commemorative medal to celebrate the event, with the motto Urbis securitas et nitor ("for the security and illumination of the city").[44]

The Samaritaine pump on the Pont Neuf supplied water to the Tuileries Palace and Louvre.

In the 17th century the drinking water of Paris came mostly from Seine, despite pollution of the river from the nearby tanneries and butcher shops. In the 18th century, taking drinking water from the river in the center of the city was finally banned. Some water also came from outside the city, from springs and reservoirs in Belleville, the Pré Saint-Gervais and La Vilette, carried in aqueducts built by the monks to the monasteries on the right bank. These also provided water to the palaces of the Louvre and the Tuileries, which together consumed about half the water supply of Paris.[45]

In 1607, Henry IV decided to build a large pump on the Seine next to the Louvre to increase the water supply for the palaces. The pump was located on the second arch of the Pont Neuf, in a high building decorated with a bas-relief of Jesus and the Samaritan at the wells of Jacob, which gave the pump the popular name of Samaritaine. The pump was finished in October 1608. The water was lifted by a wheel with eight buckets. it was supposed to lift 480,000 liters of water a day, but, because of numerous breakdowns, it only provided 20,000 liters a day, used by the neighboring palaces and gardens.

Paris fountains of the 17th century

In 1670, the city contracted with the engineer in charge of the Samaritaine to build a second pump on the pont Notre-Dame, then, in the same year on the same bridge, a third pump. The two new pumps went into service in 1673. A series of wheels lifted the water up to the top of a tall square tower, where it was transferred to pipes and flowed by gravity to the palaces. The new pumps were able to provide two million liters a day.[46]

Marie de' Medici needed abundant water for her new palace and gardens on the left bank, which had few sources of water. Recalling that the ancient Romans had built an aqueduct from Rungis to their baths on the left bank, Sully, the minister of public works, sent engineers to find the route of the old aqueduct. A new aqueduct thirteen kilometers long was constructed 1613 and 1623, ending near the present-day Observatory, bringing 240,000 liters of water a day, enough for the dowager Queen's gardens and fountains. It enabled her to construct one of the best-known fountains in Paris today, the Medici Fountain, a reminder of her childhood in the Pitti Palace in Florence, in the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace.

A water-bearer (1675)

For those outside the palaces and monasteries, and the homes of nobles who had their own wells, the water came from the fountains of Paris. The first public fountain had been built in 1183 by King Philip Augustus at Les Halles, the central market, and a second, the Fontaine des Innocents was built in the 13th century. By the beginning of the 17th century there were a dozen fountains functioning within the center of the city. Between 1624 and 1628 Louis XIII built thirteen new fountains, providing water and decoration on the Parvis of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, on the Place de Greve, Place Maubert, Saint Severin, Place Royale, rue de Buci, porte Saint Michel, and other central points.[47]

The water was transported from the fountains to the residences of the Parisians by domestic servants or by water bearers, who, for a charge, carried it in two covered wooden buckets attached to a strap over his shoulders and to a frame. There were frequent disputes between water-bearers and domestic servants all trying to get water from the fountains. Frequently the water-bearers skipped the lines at the fountains and simply took the water from the Seine.[48]

Bread, meat and wine were the bases of the Parisian diet in the 17th century. As much of sixty percent of the income of working-class Parisians was spent on bread alone.[49] The taste of Parisian bread changed beginning in 1600 with the introduction of yeast, and, thanks to the introduction of milk into the bread, it became softer.[49] Poor harvests and speculation on the price of grain caused bread shortages and created hunger and riots, particularly in the winter of 1693–1694.[50]

Parisians consumed the meat of 50,000 beef cattle in 1634, increasing to 60,000 at the end of the century, along with 350,000 sheep and 40,000 pigs. The animals were taken live to the courtyards of the butcher shops in the neighborhoods, where they were slaughtered and the meat prepared. The best cuts of meat went to the nobility and upper classes, while working class Parisians consumed sausages, tripe and less expensive cuts, and made bouillon, or meat broth. A large quantity of fish was also consumed, particularly on Fridays and Catholic holidays.[51]

Wine was the third essential for the Parisians; not surprisingly, when the price of bread and meat increased, and living became more difficult, the consumption of wine also increased. Wine arrived by boat in large kegs at the ports near the Hotel de Ville from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, and the Loire Valley. Less expensive wines came by wagon from vineyards on Montmartre and the surrounding Île-de-France. The tax on wine was a major source of income for the royal government; the wine was taxed as soon as it arrived at the port; the tax rose from three livres for a muid or barrel of wine in 1638 to 15 livres for wine arriving by land in 1680 and 18 livres for wine arriving by water.[52]

The cabaret was the ancestor of the restaurant, which did not appear until the 18th century. Unlike a tavern, which served wine by the pot without a meal, a cabaret only served wine accompanied by a meal, served on a tablecloth. Customers might sing if they had drunk enough wine, but in this era cabarets did not have formal programs of entertainment. They were popular meeting-places for Parisian artists and writers; La Fontaine, Moliere and Racine frequented the Mouton Blanc on rue du Vieux-Colombier, and later the Croix de Lorraine on the modern rue de Bourg-Tibourg.[53]

Coffee was introduced to Paris from Constantinople in 1643; a merchant from the Levant sold cups of cahove in the covered passage between the rue Saint-Jacques and the Petit-Pont; and it was served as a novelty by Mazarin and in some noble houses, but it did not become fashionable until 1669 with the arrival of Soliman Aga Mustapha Aga, the ambassador of the Turkish sultan, Mahomet IV. In 1672, a coffee house was opened by an Armenian named Pascal at the Foire-Saint-Germain, serving coffee for two sous and six deniers for a cup. it was not a commercial success, and Pascal departed for London. A new café was opened by a Persian named Gregoire, who opened a coffee house near the theater of the Comédie-Française on rue Mazarin. When the theater moved to rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain in 1689, he moved the café with them. The café did not become a great success until it was taken over by a Sicilian, Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, who had first worked for Pascal in 1672. He bought the café and began serving coffee, tea, chocolate, liqueurs, ice creams and confitures. The new Cafe Procope became fashionable and successful, and was soon copied by other cafés in the city.[54]

The fire of Saint Jean, a midsummer night festival, at the Hôtel de Ville (1617)

The life of Parisians in the 17th century was usually hard and short, and perhaps for this reason the calendar was filled with holidays and celebrations. Religious processions were not as numerous as they had been in the Middle Ages, but they were colorful and impressive. The most important was in honor of the patron saint of the city, Saint Geneviève, from the church on the left bank containing her tomb to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. The procession was led by the archbishop of Paris and the Abbé of the monastery of Sainte-Geneviève, in their full regalia and barefoot, preceded by one hundred and fifty monks and nuns. Behind them came the relics of the saint, carried by twenty men, also barefoot and dressed in white, carrying a jeweled chasse, followed by the members of the Parlement of Paris in their ceremonial scarlet robes, and the leaders of the leading guilds of craftsmen and artisans. There were processions for many different saints and holidays, which sometimes led to confrontations between the monks of different orders. According to Madame de Sevigné, in 1635 a procession of Benedictine monks refused to give way to a procession of Rogations, leading to a fight in the street in which two monks were struck with crucifixes and knocked unconscious.[55]

A ceremony from pre-Christian times, the Fire of Saint-Jean, was avidly celebrated in Paris on June 23, to mark the summer solstice. It was an enormous bonfire or series of fires, with burning twenty meters high, in front of the Hôtel de Ville. From the 14th century onwards, the fire was traditionally lit by the King himself. After the lighting, the crowd was offered wine and bread by the municipal government. While Henry IV and Louis XIII regularly took part, Louis XIV, discontented with the Parisians, only lit the fire once, and it was never lit by Louis XV or Louis XVI.[56]

The Carrousel in 1612 to celebrate the completion of Place Royale, now Place des Vosges, (1612). Carnavalet museum

Cavaliers in the Grand Carrousel of 1662

For the nobility, the most important event at the beginning of the century was the carrousel, a series of exercises and games on horseback. These events were designed to replace the tournament, which had been banned after 1559 when King Henry II was killed in a jousting accident. In the new, less dangerous version, riders usually had to pass their lance through the interior of a ring, or strike mannequins with the heads of Medusa, Moors and Turks. The first carrousel in Paris was held in 1605 in the grand hall of the Hôtel Petit-Bourbon, an annex of the Louvre used for ceremonies. An elaborate carrousel took place 5–7 April 1612 at the Place Royale (now the Place des Vosges) to celebrate its completion. An even grander carrousel was held on June 5–6, 1662 to celebrate the birth of the Dauphin, the son of Louis XIV. It was held on the square separating the Louvre from the Tuileries Palace, which afterwards became known as the Place du Carrousel.[57]

The ceremonial entry of the King into Paris also became an occasion for festivities. The return of Louis XIV and Queen Marie-Thérèse to Paris after his coronation in 1660 was celebrated by a grand event on a fairground at the gates of the city, where large thrones were constructed for the new monarchs. After the ceremony the site became known as the Place du Trône, or place of the Throne, until it became the Place de la Nation in 1880.[58]

Another traditional Parisian form of celebration, the grand fireworks display, was born in the 17th century. Fireworks were first mentioned in Paris in 1581, and Henry IV had put on a small display at the Hôtel de Ville in 1598 after lighting the Fire of Saint Jean, but the first large show was given on April 12, 1612 following the Carrousel to mark the opening of the place Royale and the proposed marriage of Louis XIII with Anne of Austria. New innovations were introduced in 1615; allegorical figures of Jupiter on an eagle and Hercules, representing the King, were created with fireworks mounted on scaffolds next to the Seine and on a balcony of the Louvre. In 1618, the show was even more spectacular; rockets were launched into the sky which, according to one witness, the Abbot of Marolles, "burst into stars and serpents of fire." Thereafter fireworks, launched from the quays of the Seine, were a regular feature of the celebrations of holidays and special events. All they lacked were color; all the fireworks were white or pale gold, until the introduction from China of colored fireworks in the 18th century.[59]

The most popular sport for French nobles in the first part of the 17th century was the jeu de paume, a form of handball or tennis, which reached its peak of popularity under Henry IV, when there were more than 250 courts throughout the city. Louis XIV, however, preferred billiards, and the number of courts for jeu de paume dropped to 114. The owners of the courts found an original and effective strategy to survive; in 1667 they applied for and received permission to have billiards tables in their premises, and in 1727 they demanded and received the exclusive rights to operate public billiards parlors.[60]

Winters in Paris were much colder than today; Parisians enjoyed ice skating on the frozen Seine.

• 
  A match of jeu de paume
• 
  Ice skaters on the Seine in 1608

The young noblemen of Paris, since the end of the 16th century, attended special schools called academies, where they were taught a range of military skills: horseback riding, fencing, marksmanship, the art of fortification and organizing sieges, as well as the social skills that they needed to succeed at the court: dance, music, writing, arithmetic, drawing, and understanding heraldry and coats-of-arms. Each student had one or two valets, and the education cost between 700 and 1,000 ecus a year. By 1650, there were six academies in the city, mostly run by Italians. When the King departed Paris for Versailles, the large riding school of the Tuileries palace, the Manege, became part of one the academies, La Guériniére. In 1789, during the French Revolution, it became the home of the French National Assembly.[63]

In 1670 a fire destroyed much of the old College of Sorbonne, but fortunately spared the chapel.

Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin lavished funds on the buildings of the University of Paris; Richelieu built a magnificent new chapel for the college of Sorbonne, which he headed, while Cardinal Mazarin built the equally-magnificent College of the Six Nations, to house nobles from the most recently added provinces of France, but the educational system of the University, which was primarily a school of theology, was in continual crisis, trying to deal with multiple heresies and challenges to its authority from newly arrived religious orders. The Sorbonne, the leading college, was challenged by the new College of Clermont, run by the Jesuit order. The royal government sought to turn the University into a training school for magistrates and state officials, but found that the faculty was only trained in canon, or church law. A fire in 1670 destroyed much of the old Sorbonne, but fortunately spared the domed chapel. By the end of the 17th century one-third of the colleges of the University had closed, and the remaining thirty-nine colleges had barely enough students to survive.[64]

In the 16th century, in the middle of the fierce struggle battle between Protestants and Catholics and between the hierarchy of the Paris church and the new religious orders in Paris, the authorities of the Paris church had tried to control the growing number of schools for Parisian children being organized in each parish, and particularly sought to limit the education of girls. However, throughout the 17th century, dozens of new schools were founded throughout the city for both boys and girls. By the 18th century a majority of children in Paris were in various kinds of schools; there were 316 private schools for paying students, regulated by the church, and another eighty free schools for the poor, including twenty-six schools for girls, plus additional schools founded by the new religious orders in Paris.[65]

Of the prominent French writers of the century, Moliere, the Marquise de Sévigné, La Rochefoucauld and Charles Perrault were all born in Paris. Pierre Corneille was from Normandy, Descartes from the Touraine, Jean Racine and La Fontaine from Champagne; they were all drawn to Paris by the publishing houses, theaters, and literary salons of the city.

The first literary academy, the Académie Française, was formally by Cardinal Richelieu on January 27, 1635 to honor but also to exert control over the literary figures of France .[68] Writers knew that any published word critical of the King or court would lead their exile from Paris. This happened to one of the founding members of the Academy, Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, who in 1660 wrote a scandalous satirical novel about life at the court of Louis XIV, which was circulated privately to amuse his friends.Although it was never published, he was banished from Paris to his chateau in Burgundy.

Set design for Andromedé by Pierre Corneille, performed February 1, 1650 at the Petit-Bourbon palace

The 17th century was an active and brilliant period for theater in Paris; it saw the founding of the Comedie-Française and the first productions of the works of Pierre Corneille, and Moliere. At the beginning of the century the pioneer Parisian theater company, the Confrérie de la Passion, installed itself in one of the buildings of the Hôtel de Bourgogne at 23 rue Saint-Etienne; it also rented out the space to visiting English and Italian theater companies.

The first permanent theatre in Paris was created by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, within his Palais-Cardinal. It was located at the corner of rue Saint-Honoré and rue de Valois. The first performance, of Mirame by Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, co-authored by Cardinal Richelieu, was given in 1641 with Louis XIII, Queen Anne of Austria, and Richelieu in the audience.[69]

A new theater company, the Illustre Théâtre, was founded in 1643 by Moliere and Madeleine Béjart. Lacking a theater of their own, they performed at the jeu de Paume des Metayers, a tennis court near the porte de Nesle, then at another tennis court at 32 quai des Celestins. The Confrérie de la Passion tried to have the theater group closed down, claiming that they had the exclusive right to produce plays in Paris, but the new company persisted. Another new company appeared in the tennis court of the Marais, at rue Vieille-du-Temple, staging works by another new playwright, Pierre Corneille, including his classical tragedies Le Cid, ''Horace, Cinna and Polyeute. The tennis court was destroyed by a fire in January 1644, but the company succeeded in October 1644 in opening a new theater, the first in Paris exclusively designed for that purpose.[70]

Scene from Moliere's The Miser (1668)

In 1661, Moliere moved his company into the theater built by Cardinal Richelieu at the Palais-Royal. After the death of Moliere in 1673, the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully expelled Moliere's actors from the theater and used it for performances of operas. Chased from their home, the actors of Moliere moved to a different theater, called La Couteillle, on the modern rue Jacques-Callot, where they merged with their old rivals, the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne. In 1680, the new company was officially chartered by the King as the Comédiens de Roi, which became known as the Comédie-Française. In 1689, they were forced to depart because of complaints that the actors were a bad influence on the neighboring noble students of the Collège des Quatre-Nations. They moved further south on the left bank to the modern rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie, where they remained until 1770, before moving back to their present home at the Palais-Royal between 1786 and 1790.[71]

Music played an important part at the royal court and in Paris society. Louis XIII, the Queen, nobles and wealthy bourgeois organized concerts and recitals and took music lessons. Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin encouraged the development of French music in place of the Italian style. Music was also seen as an important weapon of the Counter-Reformation, along with baroque art, to win ordinary people to the side of the Catholic Church. The churches were equipped with magnificent organs, and elegant new music was written by the harpsichordist Jacques Champion de Chambonnières and the Couperin family. Under Louis XIV, the court in Versailles gradually took charge of the musical program; Jean-Baptiste Lully was invited from his native Florence and became the court composer, the dominant figure in music in both Versailles and Paris.[72]

The first performance of an Italian opera in Paris, La Finta Pazza by Marco Marazzoli, took place at the theater of the Palais-Royal on February 28, 1645, followed in 1647 by the more famous Orfeo of Luigi Rossi at the Petit-Bourbon theater next to the Louvre. The first French opera, Le Triomphe de l'Amour by Beys and Laguerre, was performed at the theater du Marais. In 1669, Pierre Perrin, an opera composer, was chartered by the King to produce operas "in music and in French verse comparable to that of Italy." The first opera house was built by Perrin in the Marais, on the site of the old tennis court on the modern rue Jacques-Callot. It opened in 1670. Perrin's rival, the court composer Lully, wanted his own opera house; in 1672 he used a tennis court on the rue de Vaugirard for his first opera; then, taking advantage of Moliere's death in 1673, he was able to expel Moliere's actors from the theater of the Palais-Royal and take it over for himself. It served as the main Paris opera house until it burned on April 6, 1763.[73]

The Petit-Bourbon theater next to the Louvre also continued to present operas until it was demolished in 1660 to make room for the new colonnade of the Louvre, but it was replaced by a large new hall, the Salle des Machines, next to the Tuileries Gardens. This hall had very poor acoustics, but it was used for spectacular dance performances.

Dance had been popular at the French court since the Middle Ages, but ballet was not given a formal status until March 30, 1661, with the founding of the Académie royale de danse. The first French comedy-ballet, Les Fâcheux, was a collaboration between Moliere, Beauchamp and the composer Lully; it was performed on August 17, 1661. In 1669, the ballet academy was formally merged into the Royal Academy of Music and became part of the opera. The first opera-ballet in Paris, L'Europe galante, with music by Campra and choreography by Louis Pécour, was performed in 1697.

The Church of St-Gervais-et-St-Protais, the first Paris church with a facade in the new Baroque style (1616-1620)

The architectural style of the French Renaissance continued to dominate in Paris through the Regency of Marie de' Medici. The end of the wars of religion allowed the continuation of several building projects, such as the expansion of the Louvre, begun in the 16th century but abandoned because of the war. With the arrival in power of Louis XIII and the ministers Richelieu and Mazarin, a new architectural style, the baroque, imported from Italy, began to appear in Paris. Its purpose, like Baroque music and painting, was to awe Parisians with its majesty and ornament, in opposition to the austere style of the Protestant Reformation. The new style in Paris was characterized by opulence, irregularity, and an abundance of decoration. The straight geometric lines of the buildings were covered with curved or triangular frontons, niches with statues or cariatides, cartouches, garlands of drapery, and cascades of fruit carved from stone.[74]

The Church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis (1634)

At about the same time that the ornate baroque style appeared, the architect Salomon de Brosse (1571-1626) introduced a new classical French style, based on the traditional orders of architecture (Doric, Ionic and Corinthian), placed one above the other. He first used this style in the facade of the Church of St-Gervais-et-St-Protais (1616-1620) The style of the three superimposed orders appeared again in the Eglise Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, the new Jesuit church in Paris, designed by the Jesuit architects Etienne Martellange and François Derand.

Another type of church facade appeared in the same period, imitating the church of the Jesuits in Rome built in 1568. This facade had two levels; the lower level was the height of the chapels, while the upper level featured a high fronton above the doors. The two levels were connected with s-shaped volutes and consoles, and the whole facade was covered with niches and other decorative elements. Inside the church was rectangular with a high vaulted ceiling, with chapels on both sides. This style of church usually had a dome, the symbol of the ideal in Renaissance architecture. This style was used by Jacques Lemercier for the chapel of the Sorbonne (1635-1642), and by François Mansart for the church of the Val-de-Grace, built for Anne of Austria, the widow of Louis XIII. It was part of a large complex modeled after the Escorial in Spain, which combined a church, a convent, and apartments for the Queen.[75]

The new architectural style was sometimes called Flamboyant Gothic or French baroque. It appeared in several other new churches, including Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle (1624, damaged and then demolished after the Revolution), Notre-Dame-des-Victoires (1629), Saint-Sulpice (1646), and Saint-Roch (1653).[76]

The Pavillon de la Reine of Place des Vosges

Civil architecture of the period was particularly characterized by red brick alternating with white stone around the windows and doors, and marking the different stories, and by a high roof of black slate. The high roof, particularly used by Mansart, allowed an extra floor of habitation, became known as a Mansart roof. Notable civil buildings of the period include the Pavillon de Horloge of the Louvre by Jacques Lemercier (1620-1624), the Luxembourg Palace by Salomon de Brosse (begun 1615), and the houses around the Place des Vosges.

The palatial new residences built by the nobility in the Marais featured two new and original specialized rooms; the dining room and the salon. The new residences typically were separated from the street by a wall and gatehouse. There was a large court of honor inside the gates, with galleries on either side, used for receptions, and for services and the stables. The house itself opened both onto the courtyard and onto a separate garden. One good example in its original form is the Hôtel de Sully, (1624-1629), built by Jean Androuret du Cerceau.[77]

The Church of Les Invalides, by Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1679-1691)

Under Louis XIV, the architectural style in Paris gradually changed from the exuberance of the baroque to a more solemn and formal classicism, the embodiment in stone of the King's vision of Paris as "the new Rome." The new Academy of Architecture, founded in 1671, imposed an official style, as the academies of art and literature had done earlier. The style was modified again beginning in about 1690, as the government began to run short of money; new projects were less grandiose.

In religious architecture, the rectangular shape of churches was replaced by that of a Greek cross, with the dome at the center. The different classical orders were on display one above the other on the facade, but the dome, gilded and sculpted, rather than the facade, was the principal decorative feature. The grandest example was Church of Les Invalides (1679-1691), by Jules Hardouin-Mansart.

Perrault's colonnade of the Louvre (1670), in the monumental classic style of Louis XIV

The most important project in civil architecture was the new colonnade of the Louvre (1670). The King rejected a design presented by the Italian architect Bernini and chose instead a design by Claude Perrault, brother of Charles Perrault, author of the fairy tales Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. Perrault's long facade had a flat roof concealed by a balustrade and a series of massive columns and triangular fronts, designed to convey elegance and power. Two other major projects, the facades of the buildings around the Place des Victoires (1685-1686) and Place Louis-le-Grand (now Place Vendôme) (1687-1700) echoed the same message.[78]

Model of a statue of Louis XIV by François Girardon for Place Louis-Le-Grand

At the beginning of the 17th century, painters in Paris were considered primarily as artisans, not as artists. Like other artisans, they had their own professional guild, the imagiers-paintres, which also included engravers, illuminators and sculptors. Under the guild rules approved by the Provost of Paris in 1391, and renewed in 1619, they were required to use good-quality paint, and they were protected against foreign competition; it was expressly forbidden to import works of art from Flanders, Germany or elsewhere in Europe except during the period of the Fair of Saint-Germain and other major trade fairs. It was also forbidden by a 1639 ordinance to paint portraits of nude men or women with "postures lascivious and dishonest, and other grotesques which injure their chastity."[79]

Beginning in 1609, the Louvre Galerie was created, where painters, sculptors, and artisans lived and established their workshops. Under Louis XIV, with many new commissions for the palace in Versailles and the town houses of the nobility in Paris, the profession grew. The number of masters in the guild increased from 275 in 1672 to 552 in 1697.[79]

In addition to the guild, in 1391 the majority of painters belonged to the Académie de Saint-Luc, a professional and fraternal association. In 1648, many of the most successful and ambitious painters and sculptors, who wanted recognition as artists and not simply craftsmen, joined together to found another group, the Académie de peinture et de sculpture. In 1667, the Académie organized its first official exposition of works of art of its members. These exhibitions were held every two years, opening on August 25, the day of Saint-Louis. They were first held in the court of the Palais-Royal, then in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, and then, beginning in 1699, in the Salon Carré of the Louvre, which gave the event the name "Salon". It became the chief avenue for French artists to achieve recognition and success.[80]

The most famous painter to work in Paris during the period was Peter Paul Rubens, who came to the city in 1622 to paint a series of murals for the Luxembourg Palace which now are in the Louvre. Other painters who achieved fame in Paris early in the century were Claude Vignon, Nicolas Poussin, Philippe de Champagne, Simon Vouet, and Eustache Le Sueur. The leading painters working in Paris and in Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV included Charles Le Brun, Nicolas de Largilliere, Pierre Mignard, Hyacinthe Rigaud and Antoine Watteau.

The most important sculptors in the early century were François and Michel Anguier, who led the transition from Baroque sculpture to classicism. The major figures under Louis XIV were Girardon, a pupil of Anguier, and Antoine Coysevox. Girardon created a monumental statue of Louis XIV on horseback for the center of Place Louis-la-Grand (now Place Vendôme). The statue was pulled down and destroyed during the Revolution, but the original model is on display in the Louvre. Coysevox made a heroic statue of Louis XIV as Fame for the Chateau of Marly (now in the Tuileries Gardens)) and the majestic funeral monuments for Colbert (now in the church of Saint-Eustache); for Andre le Nôtre and Racine (in the Church of Saint-Roch) and for Cardinal Mazarin (in the Louvre).[81]

• Combeau, Yvan (2013). Histoire de Paris. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 978-2-13-060852-3.
• Denieul-Cormier, Anne (1971). Paris a l'aube du Grand Siecle. Arthaud.
• Dickens, Charles (1882), Dickens's Dictionary of Paris, London: Macmillan
• Fierro, Alfred (1996). Histoire et dictionnaire de Paris. Robert Laffont. ISBN 2-221--07862-4.
• Héron de Villefosse, René (1959). Histoire de Paris. Bernard Grasset.
• Jarrassé, Dominique (2007). Grammaire des Jardins Parisiens. Paris: Parigramme. ISBN 978-2-84096-476-6.
• Renault, Christophe (2006). Les Styles de l'architecture et du mobilier. Gissorot Patrimoine Culturel.
• Sarmant, Thierry (2012). Histoire de Paris: Politique, urbanisme, civilisation. Editions Jean-Paul Gisserot. ISBN 978-2-755-803303.
• Dictionnaire Historique de Paris. Le Livre de Poche. 2013. ISBN 978-2-253-13140-3.