Île Saint-Louis

Island · Île Saint-Louis (4th)Paris,France

The one Paris quarter that is a single 1614 property speculation, an island of unaltered 1600s houses walked end to end where the Seine splits.

Île Saint-Louis is an island of 1600s houses in the Seine, built as a single property deal and never redeveloped since. The shops, the restaurants and the ice cream queue are all on one street, rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île, which runs the length of it. Turn into any cross street and the noise stops within thirty paces. The quays carry almost no trade: plain stone fronts, plane trees, and steps down to a ledge at the water where people sit. About two thousand people live here, a quarter of the number packed in during the 1850s. In 1614 the Crown handed two empty islets in the Seine to a contractor, Christophe Marie. The grass belonged to Notre-Dame's clergy; cattle grazed it and cloth was spread on it to bleach. Marie had to fill the channel between the islets, build lasting bridges to the banks and face the new edges in cut stone, and in exchange he could sell the new ground in plots. No king designed this place: Marie and two financiers laid it out themselves, to make money on it. Within about fifty years all eleven hectares were built up.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Look up at number 51 on the main street — A bearded stone face grins over the doorway, and two carved beasts hold up the balcony above it. Most people walk straight past.
Pick your quay by the time of day — Quai d'Orléans and quai de Béthune face south and hold sun all afternoon. Quai d'Anjou and quai de Bourbon opposite sit in shade.
In winter you may not reach the water — When the Seine runs high the lower ledge floods and the city shuts the stairways. The upper quay stays open in any weather.
Find number 9 on quai d'Anjou — The caricaturist Honoré Daumier lived there from 1846, when laundry boats were moored below, and painted the women hauling wet linen up the steps.
Walk to the far west end of quai d'Orléans — From there you look at the back of Notre-Dame across a narrow arm of water. You see its buttresses and its roof with nothing in the way.

Things to do

1
Walk quai de Bourbon and look up at the balconies
Stand on quai de Bourbon with your back to the river and look up. The balconies, the tallest windows and the carved stonework all face the water. The courtyards are behind, out of sight. Seen from the lower walkway at the water's edge, the fronts rise in one unbroken wall of stone.
2
Stand at the point where the Seine splits in two
Walk to the small triangular garden at the island's upstream point. The Seine arrives as one body of water and splits at the stonework below you, one arm down each side of the island. The bronze beasts on the monument to the sculptor Barye are copies. The originals were melted down for metal in 1942, under the Vichy government.
3
Step inside the church you would otherwise walk past
Saint-Louis-en-l'Île sits mid-street behind a flat front, easy to miss between the shopfronts. Inside it is brighter and more gilded than the outside suggests, lit from windows set high above the floor. Back outside, look up at the iron clock that sticks out over the pavement. Above it stands the stone spire, cut through with open holes.