Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3: France and the Netherlands, Part 1
History
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3: France and the Netherlands, Part 1
France -- Description and travel; Netherlands -- Description and travel
The sentiment, the tomb, and the dome have a unique splendor. A
white-marble statue of Napoleon I. by Stuart is in a black-marble
chapel. His Austerlitz sword, the crown voted by Cherbourg, and colors
taken in his different battles, were formerly shown in a "chapelle
ardente."
The Palais de Justice and the Sainte Chapelle
By Grant Allen
[Footnote: From "Paris."]
Go along the Rue de Rivoli as far as the Square of the Tour St.
Jacques. If driving, alight here. Turn down the Place du Châtelet to
your right. In front is the pretty modern fountain of the Châtelet;
right, the Thèâtre du Châtelet; left, the Opéra Comique. The bridge
which faces you is the Pont-au-Change, so-called from the
money-changers' and jewelers' booths which once flanked its wooden
predecessor (the oldest in Paris), as they still do the Rialto at
Venice, and the Ponte Vecchio at Florence.
Stand by the right-hand corner of the bridge before crossing it. In
front is the Ile de la Cité. The square, dome-crowned building opposite
you to the left is the modern Tribunal de Commerce; beyond it leftward
lie the Marché-aux-Fleurs and the long line of the Hôtel-Dieu, above
which rise the towers and spire of Notre Dame. In front, to the right,
the vast block of buildings broken by towers forms part of the Palais
de Justice, the ancient Palace of the French kings, begun by Hugh
Capet. The square tower to the left in this block is the Tour de
l'Horloge. Next, to the right, come the two round towers of the
Conciergerie, known respectively as the Tour de César and the Tour de
Montgomery. The one beyond them, with battlements, is the Tour
d'Argent. It was in the Conciergerie that Marie Antoinette,
Robespierre, and many other victims of the Revolution were imprisoned.
These medieval towers, much altered and modernized, are now almost all
that remains of the old Palace, which, till after the reign of Louis
IX. (St. Louis), formed the residence of the Kings of France. Charles
VII. gave it in 1431 to the Parlement or Supreme Court. Ruined by fires
and re-building, it now consists for the most part of masses of
irregular recent edifices. The main modern façade fronts the Boulevard
du Palais.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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