Dark Paris: murders, torture and black legends

Stop for a second. Look at the ground beneath your feet. Right here, exactly here, stood a medieval fortress called the Grand Chatelet. It was not an ordinary prison. It was the most important torture center in Paris. It operated from the 11th century until 1802. Nearly eight hundred years of screaming at this exact point. The Grand Chatelet had several levels underground. The dungeons had names: la Gloriette, la Fosse, the Pit. The Pit was the worst. A completely circular chamber. No exit. No ventilation. Prisoners slowly sank into mud that rose from below. They were not executed.…

The Conciergerie is a hundred meters from where you stand. From the outside it looks beautiful. Medieval towers. The Seine in the background. But between 1793 and 1794, this building was the most feared place in Paris. Two thousand seven hundred people entered here. And left on a cart toward the guillotine. There was no return. You entered. They processed you. They cut your hair to clear your neck. And you waited. Sometimes days. Sometimes weeks. You heard the carts that took away each day's group. And you knew that one day it would be your turn. Marie Antoinette was held here for …

There is a square that most tourists walk past without entering. Place Dauphine. Right next to the Pont Neuf. It has a triangular shape. And that shape is not accidental. Beneath this square were the cells where the Knights Templar awaited execution in 1307. Philip IV of France had liquidated the Order of the Temple to take their wealth. Grand Master Jacques de Molay was burned alive on this island in 1314. According to historical records, as he burned, he cursed the king from the flames. He said Philip IV would die before the year was out. And that Pope Clement V would too. In seve…

The Pont Neuf is four hundred and twenty years old. "Pont Neuf" means New Bridge. It is the oldest bridge in Paris with the most ironic name. But we are not here for the architecture. We are here for what the Seine kept beneath this bridge. In the 18th century, the Paris police had a problem they could not solve. Every week, bodies appeared in the Seine. Some were suicides. Others were murder victims. Others had simply fallen in. In 1795 the Paris Morgue was created specifically to identify those bodies. The building stood meters from this bridge. And it had an unusual policy: it d…

There is a story from Paris that predates the famous British Sweeney Todd by more than four hundred years. And it happened just meters from Notre-Dame. The street was called Rue des Marmousets. Today it no longer exists by that name. 14th century. A barber whose name the records give as Tibault had his shop on that street. And he had wealthy clients. Pilgrims arriving at Notre-Dame with jewelry and money. Traveling merchants. Strangers with no family in the city. The barber invented a system. His chair had a hidden mechanism in the floor. When he pressed a lever with his foot, the c…

Look at the doors of Notre-Dame. The north portal doors. For centuries, craftsmen, engineers and blacksmiths studied those hinges. And could not explain them. The wrought iron hinges on the left door have a branching pattern so complex, so uniform, so perfect, that it seems impossible for 13th century technology. Legend says they were made by a blacksmith named Biscornette. A young apprentice. Talented but unknown. He received the commission to make the ironwork for the doors of the most important cathedral in France. A responsibility that would have overwhelmed anyone. And Biscornett…

The night of August 23rd to 24th 1572 was the bloodiest night in Paris's history. There had been years of tension between Catholics and Protestants. The Huguenots, as French Protestants were called, had come to Paris for a peace wedding. The wedding of Protestant king Henry of Navarre with Margaret of Valois. An attempt to unite the two sides. But Catherine de Medici and King Charles IX had decided otherwise. They had planned the assassination of the Protestant leaders. Only the leaders. What happened that night was something else. The bells of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois rang at three …

This square was called Place de Greve until 1830. Today it is the City Hall square. For four hundred years — from the 14th century until 1830 — it was the stage for Paris's public executions. Burnings. Beheadings. Hangings. The wheel. The wheel: tying the condemned to a wooden wheel and breaking their bones one by one with an iron bar while they were still alive. But the most documented case is that of Robert-Francois Damiens. On January 5th 1757, Damiens entered where King Louis XV was staying with a hunting knife. He wounded him in the side. The blade was six centimeters long. The w…

This street is less than one hundred meters long. It is a narrow, unremarkable street. But on May 14th 1610, this street changed the history of Europe. This is where Henry IV of France was assassinated. The most beloved king in French history. The man who had ended forty years of religious wars. The one who signed the Edict of Nantes giving Protestants religious freedom. The one who said he wanted a chicken in the pot of every peasant every Sunday. That man. He was in his carriage passing through this street. A religious man named Francois Ravaillac approached the carriage. He stepp…

You are standing near where the oldest and most saturated cemetery in Paris stood. The Cemetery of the Holy Innocents. It existed on this site from the 10th century until 1786. Eight hundred years of accumulating the city's dead. By the mid-18th century, the problem was unsustainable. The cemetery had so many layers of superimposed dead that the ground level had risen two meters above the level of neighboring streets. Two meters of compressed bodies. The bodies closest to the surface decomposed so shallowly that they contaminated the soil. The soil contaminated the water. The water co…

This street is more than two thousand years old. It was the first street in Paris. Laid out by the Romans. It bears the name of the first bishop of Paris, Denis, who according to legend was decapitated in the year 250 AD. On the hill now called Montmartre. The Hill of the Martyrs. That is where the official history ends. What it does not say is what happened next. According to 4th century chroniclers, Denis did not die when they cut off his head. He remained standing. He picked up his own head with his hands. He washed it in a nearby fountain. And began to walk. He walked ten kilo…

Last stop. But not the quietest. The Palais Royal was the center of French power under Louis XIV. And between 1677 and 1682 it was the center of a scandal the King ordered buried in secrecy forever. The Affair of the Poisons. A fortune teller named Catherine Monvoisin was arrested in 1679. And what she revealed during interrogations shook the court of Versailles to its foundations. La Voisin, as she was called, had a poison distribution network for aristocrats. She sold preparations to get rid of inconvenient husbands, dangerous rivals, long-standing enemies. But there was more. She …