July 14: . . . to the secular . . .

After finishing up at Sainte Chapelle, I went out to the rue and took a left and a left and headed into what's called the Conciergerie. It's most notorious, though temporary, inhabitant was Marie Antoinette.

In 1358, the royal family moved out of the Ile de la Cite and over to the Louvre (wasn't a museum then, but the Palais Royale). In 1391, this building was converted into a prison where all kinds of prisoners, from commoners to aristocrats were held. The more money, the more amenities, with the richest in somewhat furnished cells, with beds, desks, and lamps, called pistoles. The poorest, called pailleux from the hay (paille) that they slept on, would be confined to dark, damp, vermin-infested cells called oubliettes (literally "forgotten places")," where the plague flourished. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conciergerie.

These rooms were very tiny, even if you were rich (or so were the ones I saw -- about 10' x 8' maybe). But, there were only three rooms on show (with stuffed manikins in them): the first had one fellow sitting at a desk with a lamp, an elevated cot, chair, and end table. Looked relatively clean. The second had two men in it lying on cots, with maybe a small table; and the third had three manikins in it sitting on some straw looking rather limp. But, there must have been bigger rooms on a more dungeon level that we couldn't see, where people and rats were stuffed in.

The photo to the right is a recreation of Marie Antoinette's room and below left are two guards who would be to the left and behind her.

I'm just going to copy this bit from Wikipedia because it's pretty pithy and describes the situation quite well:

"The Conciergerie thus already had an unpleasant reputation before it became internationally famous as the "antechamber to the guillotine" during the Reign of Terror, the bloodiest phase of the French Revolution. It housed the Revolutionary Tribunal as well as up to 1,200 male and female prisoners at a time. The Tribunal sat in the Great Hall between 2 April 1793 and 31 May 1795 and sent nearly 2,600 prisoners to the guillotine. Its rules were simple. Only two outcomes existed — a declaration of innocence or a death sentence — and in most cases the latter was chosen."

(The photo to the right was the aristocratic women prisoners' walking garden.)

"The most famous prisoners (and victims) included Queen Marie Antoinette, the poet André Chénier, Charlotte Corday, Madame Élisabeth, Madame du Barry and the Girondins, who were condemned by Georges Danton, who was in turn condemned by Robespierre, who was himself condemned and executed in a final bout of bloodletting. En route to the tumbrils, the victims walked through the Salle Saint-Louis, (Saint Louis Room), which acquired the nickname of the Salle des Perdus, the "Room of the Doomed" (see the photo to the left)

And, lastly for this section, I'm including a photo (below right) I took of a high-water mark on a column in the "Room of the Doomed". Evidently, every 100 years or so Paris floods. The last time was 23 January 1910.