Free Seven Ages of Paris by Alistair Horne Page A

unenforceable. In a medieval Europe accustomed to evil-smelling streets, Paris had prize-winning qualities that were to endure through the ages. The streets were simply open sewers, hence the names given to some of them: Rues Merderelle, Tire-pet, Fosse-aux-Chieurs and so on. Each rainfall turned them to a mud enriched by the droppings of horses and domestic animals, the waste from the tanneries and butcheries, and of the residents themselves in their houses innocent of any plumbing; and there were the forbidden swine to root through it and churn it all up. Thus, as a consequence of his shock on opening the window on the Quai de l’Horloge, young Philippe ordered all streets to be paved. A start, a slow start, was made during his reign—beginning, understandably, with the streets adjacent to the Palais de la Cité. Gradually main thoroughfares like the Rues Saint-Martin and Saint-Jacques, Saint-Antoine and Saint-Honoré, became the first to be cobbled, or rather paved with flagstones.
    Within the protective walls Philippe had erected, Paris for the first time was now able to build in peace for the centuries to come. His achievements were remarkable. The rebuilding of the great cathedral of Notre-Dame begun by Bishop Sully under Philippe’s father in 1163 was completed. Sainte-Geneviève was rebuilt too, while the districts of Saint-Honoré, Saint-Pierre (which became Saints-Pères) and Les Mathurins—all named after the churches or monasteries founded in them—came into being. Three new hospitals were constructed, including the Sainte-Catherine on the Rue Saint-Denis founded for women in 1184. To replace the waters of the Seine, already partially polluted, a catchment for fresh water was created from springs up on the heights of Belleville outside the city, and new aqueducts, the first since the Roman era, and numerous fountains, were built (one, on the corner of Rue Saint-Martin, was to provide the citizens of Paris with drinking water for seven centuries).
    One of Philippe’s most lasting contributions to Paris was the creation of Les Halles, which Emile Zola was to dub “the belly of Paris.” All through the history of the city, down to the present era, the distribution of food has presented a fundamental headache, with cheap foodstuffs arriving in the city from underpaid producers, to reach the consumers at vastly inflated prices—due to the demands of the middlemen, in turn caused by the anarchy of the city’s narrow medieval street system. Adjacent to the unsavoury Grand Châtelet on the Right Bank was the Grève, a gravelly sandbar on which there were no buildings, except for water-mills for grain, and where there piled up shipments of all kinds of goods—hay, grain, wood, wine, fish, coal, salt and hides—conveyed up and down the Seine. It was to become a sombre place of public executions, but by the time of Philippe Auguste there had accumulated around it through the ages a malodorous anarchy of miscellaneous trades. Probably the most polluting were the tanners, who gave the Quai de la Mégisserie that runs past the site of the Grand Châtelet its present name. Other streets long since disappeared revealed the business conducted there: Rues de la Grande Boucherie, la Tuerie (slaughterhouse), Pied de Boeuf, Pierre à Poisson and de l’Ecorcherie (knacker’s yard), as well as the Val d’Amour and Pute-y-Muce (whore in hiding). The noise and smells around this area in medieval Paris must have been unspeakable. Adding to the concentration of commerce and merchandising was the fact that the great north–south axes of Rues Saint-Denis, Saint-Martin and—across on the Left Bank—Saint-Jacques, and that to the east and west of Rue Saint-Antoine, all funnelled into the narrow streets around the Grève.
    To relieve the pressure, in the early part of the twelfth century Louis le Gros had set up a primitive market on some marshy fields, Les Champeaux, which became known in perpetuity as Les Halles (apparently