A city of light and shade,
Paris always surprises those who take the time to look.
To journey through the capital's history
is to search for the traces of its age-old past.
Grasping the essence of Paris
involves finding the matrix of this city through the ages...
because Paris has stood the test of time.
From the Gaulish oppidum and the Gallo-Roman civitas
to the intellectual and religious center of the Middle Ages,
Paris grew into one of the most important cities in the Western world.
It acquired the attributes of a powerful and monumental metropolis.
From the pomp of monarchical absolutism
and the excesses of the Empire period to the capital of modern revolutions,
Paris has exerted an enormous influence throughout the world.
It has been at the vanguard of change.
Today,
the capital is seeking new challenges.
In the year 508, Clovis made Paris the seat of his kingdom.
But how could this modest-sized town be the capital of the Franks?
We need to go back to the origins of Paris.
PARIS A capital tale
PARIS Capital of change
3000 BC
In the Neolithic period, the Seine, a river dotted with islands,
flows through a marshy plain.
Hunter-gatherer tribes from Central Europe
settle on its banks.
Competition for food often leads
to fierce fighting.
In Prehistoric times, the presence of the river
offered favorable conditions for human settlement.
The Seine's banks and islands
provided natural protection
against invaders.
In the 1990,
archeological digs revealed the remains of wooden structures.
On the edge of a channel, near the banks of the Seine at Bercy,
the ground bore traces of buildings.
Was this the site of the first settlement in Paris?
But the most remarkable find was that of a number of dugouts,
each hewn from a single oak log and several thousand years old.
Built for fishing and transporting goods,
these vessels are a sign of an organized and ingenious society.
With its ever-changing moods, riches and unpredictable rises in water level
the Seine is the city's lifeblood.
The constant to and fro of boats along the river
provided a village with supplies and protection.
The Seine, where everything began...
Researchers now ponder
when these Celtic populations first appeared.
Here opinions differ.
For some, they settled in 3000 BC,
for others, it was as early as 6000 BC.
The question has yet to be answered.
What is certain is that they had been here for a very long time
when Caesar sent his legions to Lutetia.
They had not been here for a few decades, or even a few centuries,
but for at least one thousand years.
At the crossroads of the different regions of Hirsute Gaul,
named as much for its endless forests as for its long-haired inhabitants,
Lutetia occupied a privileged position.
Protected by the two arms of the Seine,
was the He de la Cité actually the birthplace of Paris?
The lie de la Cité, which became more important in medieval times,
has often been cited as the location of Lutetia.
Why? Because Caesar mentioned a town on an island in the Seine,
and it has always appeared as the largest.
In fact, the configuration of the river in ancient times,
was not the same as it is today.
It was far more changeable, with secondary arms
around pieces of land of varying sizes.
There were others, on the site of Paris itself,
on the right bank of the Seine, in the district of Rivoli-St Martin,
where there are traces of an ancient Gaulish settlement.
Archeological remains found on the He de la Cité,
for now at least, are not sufficiently convincing or numerous enough
for us to say that it was the location of a great capital of the sort
founded elsewhere in France by tribes such as the Arvenii and the Aedui.
No convincing archeological or historical traces
have revealed an urban presence on the lie de la Cité.
The absence of remains arouses curiosity.
What if the Lutetia of pre-Roman Gaul never existed?
The Lutetia of pre-Roman Gaul
is not a myth.
Caesar mentioned it by name in 53 BC and again in 52 BC.
The problem we face today is locating this capital beneath a vast city center
that has had a long history, grown over the centuries,
and which, as a result, is like a kind of palimpsest.
That's to say, there is a succession of layers, firstly of alluvial deposits
then of buildings from the Roman era, Middle Ages, modern times,
under which it is very difficult to find the traces, the signs of this Lutetia.
They exist but they are faint and very scattered.
It was Jules Caesar who first mentioned the Lutetia of the Parisii:
river traders who lived in a fortified settlement near the Seine.
Set between the hills and the plains,
it was the ideal location for a military observation post, an oppidum,
from which to control the Seine.
During Caesar's campaigns,
the river remained a strategically important transport route.
When the Roman troops arrived,
the Parisii's city was a regional market town with a large sanctuary.
In this holy place, the Gaulish chiefs held feasts
and sacrificed animals in the name of their gods.
This stronghold was inhabited by formidable traders
who even minted their own money: the stater.
Three of these Parisii staters were found
during road works on the Boulevard Raspail
between 1910 and 1912.
It's an expression of the wealth and power of the Parisii,
which shows how important this tribe was in the first century BC,
at the time of Caesar's conquest.
It also represents the economic power
of this population.
Was Lutetia already a capital?
The Parisii along this section of the Seine
did not constitute one of the largest cities of Gaul
that took on Caesar from 58 BC onwards.
It was a medium-sized city, even a small city,
but it was still able, for instance,
to supply a contingent of 8000 men
at the time of Vercingetorix's rebellion.
And it is thought the population numbered several tens of thousands.
It is very difficult now to estimate the actual number,
but it was a large territory with settlements in different areas,
not just in Paris but also in Nanterre, Bobigny,
Roissy and Cheesy.
So there was a whole network of settlements on this territory
which, because it was not very wide, seems to have been densely populated.
As for Lutetia, it was mentioned at the time of the Battle of Lutetia,
at the time of the city's destruction, because there was a great fire,
and when this Gaulish town gave way to a small Roman capital.
52 BC
Intent on conquering Gaul,
Julius Caesar has his work cut out for him with Vercingetorix.
The Roman emperor asks Titus Labienus to fight Lutetia.
Facing him, the old chief Camulogene
leads the fierce resistance of the Parisii.
Taken from the rear, the Lutetians burn their city to the ground.
In October 52 BC, in Alesia,
Vercingetorix lays down his arms before Caesar.
Gaul submits to Roman rule.
What happens to Lutetia?
The question is did Labienus,
when he defeated this coalition of tribes led by the Parisii,
leave a contingent there to guard the city?
Or was the city emptied of its inhabitants?
Finds made in the Mount St Genevieve Luxembourg Gardens sector
lead us to suppose that this area corresponds exactly
to the location of one or indeed several, of Labenius's camps.
This military camp of Labenius was the embryo,
the nucleus from which the Gallo-Roman city of Lutetia grew.
Although the whole of Gaul was now under Roman rule,
Lutetia was not a capital city.
Compared with the great provincial capitals
such as Rheims and Lugdunum,
Lutetia was only an administrative center.
It was absolutely not a capital at this time. That would come later.
For the simple reason that, from a strategic, geostrategic point of view,
Lutetia was not in the center of the territory that was Gaul.
Lyons was in much a better position,
a day's horse ride from the four provinces.
Following the destruction of the oppidum, in 52 BC,
a long period of trouble ensues in the Roman Empire.
Some Gaulish aristocrats are even enlisted
as cavalrymen by Octavius, the new Caesar.
With the return of peace,
Gaul has to be organized under Rome's authority.
In 5 AD, these Romanized Gauls return home.
Brother! It's been so long since I've seen your face.
Getting my military certificate.
Auxiliary Julius. Galiacus Cohort. Third Legion.
I served in the wars
and even beheaded men in Rome.
All in the name of Caesar.
Rome'? What is it like?
I'll describe the arena.
Imagine a man with black skin,
chained in the center of the arena.
A small blade his only weapon.
And then, they send in an enraged elephant.
Always the same sad outcome:
the elephant crushes him.
What's the point?
To entertain people.
I've heard that the arena can hold 50,000 Romans.
50,000'?
This oppidum has barely...
There's also a Via Maximus,
a road where you walk on stones.
We could have a Via Maximus
that reaches from here to the Forum.
The Forum?
The Forum Magnum. It has everything:
food to eat, animals to buy,
schools for him, the Temple of Mars.
And drink. They have taverns where you drink.
Your Forum is like our entire village covered with a roof.
Julius,
we live in the middle of nowhere. Wouldn't you rather live in Rome'?
If I come back to Lutetia,
it is to do business for the Romans.
What would you have us sell to them?
Your barley beer, your pottery?
Fabrics?
Using the river, we could deliver to Lugdunum. And from there,
Rome.
And use the profits to build thermal baths.
What's that? Thermal baths?
Baths with warm water from the ground.
Once we build them, people will be able to wash
once a month.
Every regional capital in Gaul,
but also elsewhere in the Roman Empire, was based on the same model,
like a miniature reproduction of the city of Rome
and its political system.
In the first century AD, the face of Lutetia changes:
Gaulish houses are replaced by Roman buildings.
The architects design the city to match its status
as the administrative center of the Parisii.
The Cardo Maximus, the main artery,
runs through the center of the city from north to south.
The left bank becomes the city's hub.
Lutetia was planned around a main axis
This street was probably a
Gaulish roadway originally.
From the summit of Mount St Genevieve,
located around 172-174 Rue St Jacques,
a road was built down to the Seine.
This was this first axis.
The central part of the city
was planned on a grid system around this axis.
On the left bank,
the city was based on the Roman model.
Perpendicular to the first axis,
Lutetia's main arteries followed an orthogonal pattern.
The city was developed
around a grid system with blocks of housing:
the ancient districts of Paris.
All of the city's monumental architecture
was built around the north-south axis,
where the Rue St Jacques,
the Rue de la Cité and the Rue St Martin now lie.
Monuments were also erected
at the different main intersections.
As in every Roman city, Lutetia had its Forum
and buildings devoted to
entertainment, such as a theater,
an amphitheater...
And an arena!
As was the Roman custom,
they were located outside the center of Lutetia
because human blood was spilled there.
This arena contributed to the city's cultural vitality.
Almost 18,000 people would come
from all over the area to watch the shows in Lutetia.
The structure was one of the largest amphitheaters in Gaul at the time.
An imposing wall marked the location of the stage.
Its monumental facade was decorated with statues of emperors and divinities
like so many witnesses to the staging of the city.
Both a circus and a theater,
the most extraordinary shows were put on here
much to the delight of the Lutetians.
Great plays sung in Latin,
dance and acrobatic numbers and most importantly,
gladiator fights and wild animal fights,
trophies from the Roman conquest of Africa and the Orient.
By offering bread and games to the populations under their rule,
the Romans entertained their subjects and secured their loyalty.
On the top of Mount St Genevieve,
one monument in particular symbolized
the power and grandeur of this city:
the Forum.
The Forum was the city's political and administrative center.
Commercial transactions took place there.
But it was also a very ostentatious way
of demonstrating Rome's power,
of showing that Gaul had become part of a new political and religious order.
The gods were Roman now.
Administration was now in the hands of Rome,
of the provincial governor.
So this was where this radical change in order
was demonstrated in a spectacular, monumental manner.
Together with the Temple of Augustus and the basilica,
from where the city was managed,
the Forum was Lutetia's political and religious heart.
The citizens would meet here to hold ceremonies,
discuss their business and the affairs of the city.
Colonnaded shopping galleries ran along
the outside wall.
In the shops and taverns,
the Lutetians did their daily shopping,
drank wine and barley beer
or simply strolled.
Roman and Gaulish citizens mixed. This was the start
of the Parisians' fascination with Rome,
its grandeur and its empire,
which has never ceased to shape the city's history.
The Romans did not try to impose their pantheon
but, in a sense, they offered it.
And they were quite open to the deities the Gauls offered.
So there was this sort of constant exchange
that resulted in composite gods with mixed origins.
This religious syncretism is evident
in works such as The Three-headed Mercury
or The Stele of Mercury.
These representations have Gaulish and Roman attributes.
Among the few remains of Lutetia
found buried beneath the streets of Paris,
these stone blocks embody this mixing of religion and culture:
the Pillar of Nautes.
In fact, what you see here are fragments of the pillar.
We do not know exactly
how these different parts fit together.
But they enable us to imagine that it was a vertical, very tall monument,
which was quite exceptional in several respects.
First of all, we know by whom and when it was built.
The corporation of Nautes, the river boatmen,
dedicated it during the reign of Tiberius.
This indication means it can be dated precisely.
The pillar was made in the first century AD.
The representations are of a religious nature,
with deities from both the Roman and the Gaulish pantheons.
The inscription dedicated to Emperor Tiberius
is like an ancient Rosetta stone.
There are few written traces from this period.
So this dedication constitutes the birth certificate
of Gallo-Roman Lutetia.
You had to have this coexistence of two cultures.
That is why this monument is also a sign for us.
Because it's evidence, in stone, of what is known as syncretism,
which is the absorption of one culture by another culture.
That's also where the talent of Roman culture lay.
It adopted and accepted pre-existing cultures
to get its own culture accepted.
It symbolizes Lutetia.
The Lutetia of the first centuries AD was a prosperous city
where new traditions merged with Gaulish customs.
The Parisii's territory was a key commercial hub.
The population lived thanks to the river and its riches.
The Nautes, or watermen, who controlled river trade,
constituted one of the first municipal elites.
The Nautes played a decisive role.
It was one of the most powerful guilds at the time,
and control of river trade not only brought them wealth
but also political power.
It is thought today that this local elite
took advantage of Romanization to become even more powerful.
Gallo-Roman civilization emerged.
And the city was the founding element.
Romanization occurred through urbanization,
and it was through the city that the Romans
would control the Empire, control the provinces.
So the imperial power provided
the towns and cities, their inhabitants, the local elites
with the pleasures of the Roman lifestyle.
That's to say, shows, interior decoration,
the comfort of a well-organized life.
It was also a way for those in power to ensure
these elites were peaceful
and would adhere to the empire's values.
The Romans' way of life
was readily adopted by the inhabitants of Lutetia.
The custom of bathing was one of its many appealing aspects.
Several establishments were at their disposal,
including the Northern Baths.
In Roman daily life, bathing was extremely important.
It was something that people took time over.
It was more than just a question of hygiene.
It was about body care, meeting others for pleasure
and probably for professional reasons as well.
It was a normal part of daily life.
That's why the baths were so majestic and large.
A lot of money was spent on them,
a mixture of public and private money,
to show how majestic Rome and the Roman model were
and also to enable as many people as possible
to gather, at the same time,
in these large spaces.
Known as the Thermes de Cluny, the baths in the north of the city
were built in the late 1st century or early 2nd century.
On the corner of the Boulevard St-Germain
and the Boulevard St-Michel,
these baths were one of the largest bath complexes in Gaul.
This establishment had covered spaces
and open courtyards.
Clients worked their way through the building
from north to south.
They accessed the palestrum, where they did physical exercise,
via a colonnaded gallery.
Then they visited the cold water, warm water and hot water rooms.
The frigidarium, or cold water room,
is one of the few remaining monumental remains
of Gallo-Roman baths.
As soon as you enter this room,
the frigidarium of the northern baths,
you automatically look up
because the first thing that grabs you
is its majestic, magnificent height.
It is 15 meters high at its apex.
Then there is this impression of a grandiose yet intimate space.
This feeling of intimacy is probably also due
to the room's faint pinkish color.
You have the pink of the plaster
but also of the brickwork of this wall facing, or opus mixtum,
a characteristic feature of Roman architecture,
with its alternate courses of terracotta bricks
and limestone rubble, hence the name.
In the frigidarium,
traces of pigments are a reminder of the glory days of Antiquity.
A period when the inside of this building
was painted and decorated...
These consoles in the shape of ships' prows laden with arms
embody the power of the boatmen of Lutetia.
But for some historians,
they are the symbol of the Roman Empire on the seas.
This boat on the ocean waves is still the emblem of Paris.
Its motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur. "It floats but does not sink."
reminds us that "Water makes the city",
as the Roman author Pliny said.
You cannot have thermal baths without a water-supply system
because water is one of the most important elements
in the running of baths, together with heating,
which is where they get their name.
These water-supply systems are very easy to spot,
particularly in the basement of the northern baths.
And we also have two very visible sewer systems.
This ancient sewer system
is typical of a city that had an extensive water network.
It wasn't simply a question of supplying the baths with water,
there were public fountains too.
So we know all about this water-supply system.
The drains are still visible in the frigidarium
and, in the basement, we have a sewer system
that is very spectacular.
A 20km-long aqueduct
ran from the Val de Rungis to the south of the city.
This monumental structure gave Lutetia a constant supply of water.
This natural resource was essential to the daily,
commercial and political life of the city.
In the Archeological Reserves of Paris,
remains of this aqueduct attest to the skill of Roman engineers.
With the baths, public fountains and numerous wells,
water now sprang out everywhere in Lutetia
as it did in all Roman cities and towns.
What we call the Roman way of life
could also be seen in other aspects of daily life.
Things such as hairstyling,
which have been preserved in images.
People wore their hair in the Roman style.
This fashion for the Roman look
is one of the expressions
that echoes what we say about the question of architecture,
about this way of marking a territory with the Roman model.
By the second century AD,
the Gaulish populations living in Lutetia
were only Gaulish by name. They were citizens
of the Roman Empire.
During the pax romana,
or Roman peace, Lutetia underwent rapid change.
In just two centuries,
the town turned into a majestic city worthy of the Roman Empire.
But it was still denied
the status of the capital of Gaul.
Today, the few remaining ancient monuments
have been absorbed by the city's growth.
Thanks to archeological excavations,
major remains have reappeared.
The arena was discovered by Theodore Vaoquer, in 1869,
during the building of the Rue Monge.
The great public monuments were built of stone.
As for more modest private housing,
earth and wood were still being used.
But public monuments were made of stone.
Stone is a very important marker of Romanization
because you do not find it in the Gaulish period,
prior to the Roman conquest.
The stone came from a number of different places.
But they mainly used limestone, rubble stone of local origin,
in the broad sense,
brought in from 30-odd kilometers away for building.
In the first days of Gallo-Roman Lutetia,
limestone was extracted from open-air quarries
on the edge of the Seine, the Marne and the Bievre.
In 2011, in the district of St-Marcel,
excavations revealed the presence of an ancient Paris stone quarry.
We are in the 13th arrondissement,
behind the Gobelins Factory to be precise,
and this is the former location
of a concave bend of the Biévre:
a small river which flowed into the Seine, near the Gare d'Austerlitz.
It played an important role in the history of Paris.
There was a steep bank,
which meant it was possible to quarry the limestone
that was used to build part of Lutetia and then later the medieval city.
Because of the thinness of the layers,
the stone extracted from this quarry
could only be used to make rubble stone,
that's to say small blocks, which were used
for individual homes and the facades of some monuments,
such as the Forum,
but not large foundations.
For the decorative facing of monuments,
far more exotic materials were used.
These came from further away.
Materials such as marble,
which could have come from any of the Empire's provinces,
and sandstone from the south of France, for instance,
from the Province of Narbonne.
A whole range of materials was used,
local materials and imported, exotic materials
for monumental architecture.
Almost nothing remains of the Left Bank's architectural finery.
By the middle of the 3rd century,
the Roman city model was on the wane.
New uses were found for Lutetia's architectural adornments.
From the end of Antiquity,
as was the case in all Roman cities,
Lutetia's principal monuments
became the target of opportunistic vandalism.
People took whatever they could from these beautiful stone buildings
and reused it in other places.
So monuments that had lost their purpose in the life of society
became part of other monuments all over the place.
The stones around me
are evidence of the architectural finery
that once existed in Lutetia
and of which hardly any trace remains within the city of Paris.
These blocks, for instance, were found reused in other buildings.
The problem is,
the monumental architecture of Lutetia in the High Empire
completely disappeared as a result of this later reuse.
These sculpted architectural elements were once part of Lutetia's Forum.
They adorned one of its porticos.
They are some of the few remains
from this symbol of Parisian life in Antiquity.
To learn more about daily life in Lutetia,
archeologists excavate the sites of insulae
or blocks of housing.
In 2006, perpendicular to the Rue St Jacques,
they discovered the remains of a Gallo-Roman road and house.
Among other things,
this house revealed everyday objects.
These pots and glassware come from different excavation sites in Paris.
And, with them, another era resurfaces.
Some of these utensils were commonly produced,
others are more refined.
They arrived in Lutetia from all over the Empire
or were made in the city's workshops.
This is a collection of pottery that was made in Lutetia
in the 2nd or 3rd century.
These pieces can tell us what the inhabitants of Lutetia ate back then
but only those
from a poorer section of the population
because this kitchenware would have belonged
to an ordinary family.
However we have texts, notably those of Apicius,
a famous cook in Augustus's day,
which tell us about extravagant recipes
with costly ingredients.
An example of the type of delicacy eaten in Lutetia at the time
is oysters.
Many have been found on Roman sites and these oysters,
which were imported from Normandy and Brittany,
were definitely a costly product.
The boatmen of the Seine
transported necessities and luxury items
to the shores of Lutetia.
River trade was the city's main source of economic wealth.
Lutetia also benefited from an extremely dense network
of Roman roads, which ran all over Europe.
Milestones were placed all along these ancient roads.
This one was found during an excavation in Avenue des Gobelins.
On the upper part of this element,
which is slightly cylindrical, you can see an inscription.
This inscription tells us a number of things:
the first two lines mention an emperor,
the emperor under whom the inscription was made,
and the third thing, which is particularly important,
the last surviving line of this inscription says CIV - PAR,
Civitas Parisiorum, the city of the Parisians.
So this is the earliest evidence we have
of Lutetia's name changing
and becoming the City of the Parisians - Paris -
around 309-310 AD.
It wasn't necessarily a political decision.
It was a question of usage.
Roman names, which were often complicated, gradually disappeared.
People preferred to refer to cities as the "Capital of the People...
So we have the Capital of the Senones,
which became Sens,
The Capital of the Santones, which became Saintes,
the Capital of the Parisii, or rather, oppidum parisiorum.
People ended up saying Parisii. Paris in other words.
So a gradual change in linguistic usage probably explains this name change.
In the mid 3rd century, a new era dawned in ancient Lutetia.
Like all over northern Gaul, the city is completely replanned
owing to the political and economic climate.
The left bank is partially abandoned.
Stones from the Forum and the arena
are used to fortify the lie de la Cité.
Parisian life now revolves around a civil basilica.
At the time, the basilica was a rectangular building
used for legal activities,
the ancestor of the Palais de Justice, or law courts,
which is still on the lie de la Cité.
Beneath the square in front of Notre Dame,
archeological excavations
have revealed remains of the Lower Empire period.
Begun in 1965
by the archeologist Michel Fleury, these excavations
are now led by Sylvie Robin and Rose-Marie Mousseaux.
The archeological crypt houses the late walls
of the city of Lutetia. By "late", we mean the 4th century.
These walls surrounded Lutetia, or rather the island of Lutetia.
We have a short quote from the Emperor Julian,
which gives us an idea of what Lutetia was like in those days.
In 357, when he arrived after one of his military campaigns,
he entered his "charming Lutetia". That's the word he used.
So he entered his charming Lutetia, which was surrounded by walls.
This means that at the time, around 357-358 AD,
the city was completely enclosed by walls.
Within the city walls,
roads were re-laid,
several bath complexes were built and, probably,
a palace and a basilica too.
In Late Antiquity, these small baths
stood near the outer walls of the lie de la Cité.
Although they could only hold 7 people,
they were modeled along the same lines
as larger bathing establishments,
with hot, warm and cold rooms.
Little is known about the water-supply system,
but water probably came from a well
or the Seine, which was very nearby.
Facing the right bank, there was an architectural complex
with a military palace and the basilica.
This building may have been used by Emperor Julian and his staff.
When Julian came to spend several winters running in Lutetia,
he was not thinking about using it for a particular purpose.
He simply needed to house his troops for the winter
because the Roman army fought campaigns in summertime
and, in the winter, the troops withdrew, rested
and settled for a while.
Julian was drawn to Lutetia
as much for the riches of its river
as for the vines on the slopes of Montmartre.
He stayed at the palace several times
during his military campaigns against the Franks.
In March 360, it was in Lutetia
that Julian was proclaimed emperor by his own troops.
At that time, Lutetia regained a strategic importance that it had lost.
This is probably why the Frankish kings
named Paris as the capital in the 5th century.
Near the Rhine,
violent barbarian incursions threaten the Roman Empire.
A few days' walk from Germanic lands,
Paris stands on the border between these two civilizations.
An attack by Attila and the Huns seems imminent.
When Attila arrived in the West,
in 451, he ransacked Metz.
Rumors about the acts of cruelty spread.
The Parisians, at least the men, were tempted to flee the city
and live in the forest and the countryside.
But Genevieve decided to organize resistance
and believed that Attila
would not be able to seize the city.
Genevieve was a frail young woman
with the mystic veil of the saint and a keen sense of diplomacy.
She lived as a nun in Paris.
She was from a wealthy family
and probably head of the Paris Curia. She was mayor before the term existed.
And so Genevieve, in conditions
we know nothing about, organized the defense of Paris.
The Huns are in the Paris area, ready to sweep into the city.
The men are determined to abandon it.
Alone, Genevieve puts up a fierce resistance.
We must flee.
Why all this talk of fear?
Of fleeing to other cities?
Lutetia, under Christ's protection, will escape the carnage.
What would you have us do?
Pray at the swords?
To hell with you and your God!
- You're talking nonsense. - You're not His Messenger!
God did speak to me with love.
If we flee the city,
we'll be at the mercy of the Barbarians.
Butunfied and with heaven's guidance,
we can fight back.
You're a prophetess of doom!
You men are all cowards.
You, women of Lutetia, have the courage.
Don't abandon your city,
where you were conceived,
where your children were born
and your ancestors died.
Let the men run away in fear,
if they don't have the strength to stand up and fight.
But we women will kneel and pray
until God hears us!
Attila goes around the city and heads for Orleans.
The Parisians are convinced they have been spared
because of Genevieve's prayers.
They shower her with praise.
Genevieve had a very important role.
She had a special devotion for St Denis.
In her writings, The Life of St Genevieve,
.
she describes how she walked from Paris to St Denis
via the La Chapelle Pass, site of the present Porte de la Chapelle.
So she had a special devotion for him.
The fact so many Frankish aristocrats, mainly women, were buried at St Denis,
probably has something to do with St Genevieve's special devotion.
As the patron saint of the city,
Genevieve embodied the destiny of Paris:
a miraculous survivor,
a city untouched by the test of time
or men's misfortunes in the name of God.
She followed in the footsteps of St Denis,
the bishop missionary who first tried to convert
the Parisians to Christianity.
Tradition has it
that St Denis was the first bishop of Paris.
He was martyred in Montmartre in the middle of the 3rd century.
But we now believe that he was a bishop missionary, an itinerant bishop,
martyred because he wanted to convert the Parisians.
He was martyred, beheaded on the hill of Montmartre.
According to legend
- this was much later, in the 8th or 9th century -
he carried his head from Paris to St Denis.
That's 6 kilometers!
So he was buried roughly where we are standing now,
on the spot where the basilica was built.
The bishop was buried in a small Gallo-Roman cemetery,
which was soon turned into a mausoleum.
In the 5th century,
St Genevieve had a church built here.
Dedicated to his memory,
the place of worship took the name of St Denis.
The abbey-church, which became a basilica in the Merovingian period,
illuminated the political and spiritual history
of the successive royal dynasties in Paris.
The crypt of the Basilica of St Denis
contains the remains of the original church.
We are standing on the site
of what was an exceptional and very large memorial.
The nave was nine meters wide.
And you can see here, on both sides, large stone blocks
from an ancient monument that was probably destroyed.
These blocks were used for the foundations of this first memorial.
This sarcophagus has been identified as being that of St Denis.
From the second half of the 5th century,
notables and two Merovingian kings would be buried
as close as possible to the sainted bishop's remains.
Pummeled on all sides by invading barbarians,
the Roman Empire begins to disintegrate.
The Frankish army of King Childeric sweeps down from the north
and lays siege to Paris for almost ten years.
Genevieve leads the resistance.
At the risk of her life, she embarks on a journey
to find grain with which to feed the city.
When these large boats dock in Paris,
the starving crowd give her a jubilant welcome
and hasten to make bread.
Yet again Genevieve has changed the Parisians' destiny
and saved the city.
Childeric admires the woman's courage.
She even bounces little Clovis, the future king, on her knee.
After the Franks finally take Paris,
Genevieve becomes the protector of the Merovingian kings.
In the Ancien Régime period, the Merovingians
were seen as the kings of the first race.
So the Merovingians were the first French dynasty.
Well, French before the term had been coined,
since France did not exist yet.
And its real founder was Clovis,
Childeric's son.
In Frankish, Clovis was Chlodowig. It isn't easy to pronounce.
This became Ludovicus, then Louis.
So you could almost say Clovis was Louis the First.
Clovis becomes King of the Franks at the age of 15.
He is, above all, a fearsome warrior
who sets about conquering territory from the Somme to the Loire.
Following his military successes,
Clovis needs a capital to establish
the undisputed seat of his kingdom.
After his victory over the Visigoths in Vouillé in 507,
after his triumph at Tours in 508, in the manner of a Roman emperor,
Clovis decided to provide himself with a capital and he chose Paris.
He did not choose Paris as capital
for military or strategic reasons, as has often been said,
or even for political reasons, but for religious reasons.
The fact is Clovis and Clotilda had had an excellent relationship
with Genevieve, who had become, in a manner of speaking,
the protector of the nascent Merovingian dynasty.
By choosing Paris as the capital,
they anchored the dynasty by St Genevieve's tomb.
This is what led them to build the Basilica of the Holy Apostles
over her tomb.
Around the year 500,
Clovis decided to build his mausoleum next to Genevieve's tomb.
On top of the mount that still bears the name of the patron saint of Paris,
he built the Basilica of the Holy Apostles,
later known as St Genevieve Church. It no longer exists.
Clovis's Tower is all that remains of this abbey.
Built later, the church of St Etienne du Mont
stood next to St Genevieve's basilica.
King Clovis died in 511.
He was buried next to the graves of his wife, Clotilda,
and of Genevieve. But his tomb has never been found.
Clovis's choice would be decisive for the future.
Following his death,
when his kingdom was divided between his sons,
Paris became a jointly-owned city:
in other words, none of his sons could go there
unless he was accompanied by one or another of his brothers.
During the entire Merovingian period, it was a holy city.
So each kingdom, or sub-kingdom, had its capital,
but Paris was the joint capital of the Merovingian kings.
With the Frankish kings now on the lie de la Cité,
numerous churches are built on both banks of the Seine.
But these places of worship
do not survive the ferocious attacks of the Vikings from the middle
of the 9th century.
Every ten years, the city is attacked by hordes of invaders
who would sail up the Seine.
In 885, the river is awash with Iongships
full of men armed to the teeth.
The Vikings ransack the suburbs on both banks
and get dangerously close to the lie de la Cité.
The battle rages on.
The bishop and the Count of Paris organize the city's defense.
The Parisians put up fierce resistance around the Grand Pont,
opposite the Chételet, or castle, guarding the river.
They all hope for the royal army's support.
But Charles the Fat refuses to fight
and negotiates the end of the siege in exchange for a ransom.
In danger of disappearing, shaky and fragile,
Paris survives and pursues its destiny.
In 987, a new dynasty,
the Capetians, seizes power.
Paris the capital is waiting for a visionary who will help it up
and protect it from the challenges of the new age that is dawning.
Subtitles: Vdm OCR Conversion done by KarMa of the MVGroup