IV THE NORTH BANK (RIVE DROITE)

[PARIS, north of the river,—which is for most purposes the practical Paris of business and pleasure (and of the ordinary tourist) at the present day—has grown by slow degrees from small beginnings. The various rings of its growth are roughly marked on the Map of Historical Paris. The wall of Philippe Auguste started from near the easternmost end of the existing Louvre, and, after bending inland so as just to enclose the Halles Centrales, reached the river again near the upper end of the Île St. Louis. It thus encircled the district immediately opposite the primitive islands: and this innermost region, the Core of the Right Bank, still contains most of the older buildings and places of interest N. of the river. Étienne Marcel’s walls took a slightly wider sweep, as shown on the Map; and by the time of Louis XIII. the town had reached the limit of the Great Boulevards, which, with their southern prolongation, still enclose almost everything of historical or artistic interest in modern Paris. The fact that the kings had all their palaces in this northern district was partly a cause, partly perhaps an effect, of its rapid predominance. The town was now spreading mainly northward.

The increase of the royal power brought about by Richelieu, and the consequent stability and internal peace of the kingdom, combined with the complete change in methods of defence which culminated in Vauban, enabled Louis XIV to pull down the walls of Paris altogether, and to lay out the space covered by his predecessor’s fortifications in that series of broad curved avenues which still bears from this circumstance the name of Boulevards (“bulwarks” or ramparts). The original line so named, from the Bastille to the Madeleine, is ordinarily spoken of to this day simply as “the Boulevard.” All the others called by the same have borrowed the title, mostly at a very recent date, from this older girdle. Gradually, the Faubourgs which gathered beyond the line of the inner city, as well as beyond the artificial southern prolongation of the Boulevards by which Louis continued his circle, with true French thoroughness of system, on the southern bank, have entirely coalesced with the central town, and at last enormously outgrown it. Nevertheless, to the end, the Paris of Louis XIV continues to enclose almost all that is vital in the existing city. Especially is Paris within the Great Boulevards to this day the Paris of business and finance: it includes the Bourse, the Banque de France, the Bourse de Commerce, the chief markets, the Post Office, the Ministries of Finance, Marine, and Justice, the Hôtel de Ville, numerous Government Offices, the principal wholesale warehouses, financial firms, and agencies, and almost all the best shops, hotels, banks, and business houses.

Even the inner circle itself, again, within the Boulevards, has been largely transformed by modern alterations, especially in that extensive reorganisation of the city inaugurated under Napoleon III by Baron Haussmann. In the brief itinerary which follows, and in which I have endeavoured to give the reader in two short walks or drives some general idea of the development of the Right Bank, with its chief points of interest, I shall indicate roughly the various ages of the great thoroughfares, and note with needful conciseness the causes which at various times led to their construction.]