From a King's Pavillion to the Lost Temple

Sounds a bit like an Indiana Jones movie, doesn't it?  Nothing quite so dramatic, but I decided to take my walk on the outer edges of the Marais today.  The Marais is the oldest neighborhood in Paris, and one of the few that wasn't carved up into huge boulevards by Haussmann in the 1850s and 1860s.  It still has a lot of its smaller, picturesque streets, cool little shops, and green hideaways--also some grand city houses of the old elites.  I get off the metro and haven't walked half a block before I look left and see a beautiful archway.  I recognize it as one of my favorite squares in the city, the beautiful Place des Vosges.  I found this cool aerial photo of it on the net, but of course, that's not how it looks when you wonder into it.  It's been called the Place des Vosges since early in the French Revolution, named for the first French department (equivalent to an American state) to pay its taxes to the Revolutionary government back in 1792.  I find myself wondering how many states in the U.S. would seek out that particular honor?!  Before that, it was the Place Royale and represented one of the very first efforts at some kind of urban planning.  Henri IV set out the plans for the square and built the first pavillion (which is still called "The King's Pavillion") and "invited" his nobles to pay for the others.  As a result, Paris has one of its most beautiful squares.  Today it's sunny, and so I stroll through the Place des Vosges.  It's the only large green space in this part of Paris, so it's always a popular place for local people to sit and take the sun and for kids to drum up a fast soccer match. 

One of the cooler things about it is that the city closes about half the lawns each day but allows people to lounge on the other half.  That way, they preserve the grass!  It's very French.  After a slow stroll around I leave the Place des Vosges and meander into the Marais past the (closed for renovation) Picasso museum by which there are some very cool little art galleries.  Presumably, people who visit the museum must be in the mood to buy unusual art.  Anyway, I head up toward the Rue Bretagne at the outer edge of this part of the city and take in the sites.  Traffic seems normal to me even though reports claim the French aren't driving as much right now to conserve fuel.  As those of you who've been following the news know, the big French unions have been demonstrating and striking over the conservative government's decision to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the age for full pensions up to 67.  Most countries are doing something similar (the US will have to soon), but it's a big deal here.  It's perceived as a step back in the safety net, which it is.  Anyway, they've been blockading most of the country's refineries, and gas supplies are running low.

You sure wouldn't know it to see the traffic, which is just as crazy as usual.  I make my way down the street to a gorgeous little park called the Parc du Temple (thus the title of this post).  It's almost perfectly rectangular, has a great little playground for kids which, at this time of day (close to 5 pm) is fairly crowded, the kids having gotten out of school for the day, and parents trying to tire them out before dinner.  The sun is fading now, but it's still shining on one side of the park, and those benches are all crowded with people grabbing that last vestige of fall sunshine.  I know this because I go over to grab a little myself. 

One of the odder things about being a historian of France in Paris is that there are usually two Parises I inhabit, the modern one everyone sees, and the historical one behind it that I tend to see.  It's sometimes a bit like having double vision!  In this case, the park sits on the original site of the great monastery of the Knights Templar, the subject of endless goofy Dan Brown-like suspense thrillers.  The Templars were in fact a religious order of the middle ages which did become very wealthy.  King Philip IV decided to take all their money at the beginning of the 1300s and used a charge of heresy as a cover for the theft.  It was a nasty business, but then Philip was a pretty nasty fellow.  He did succeed, however (killing all the Templars he could lay his hands on in the process), and all the property of the Templars became royal, which also conveniently allowed him to set up one of the very first central treasuries in the world.  From such actions are modern states made.  The remains of the Templar properties stayed up for centuries, and the keep--the original castle--was eventually turned into a prison.  Louis XVI and his son who would have been Louis XVII (the so-called "lost dauphin") were imprisoned there before the king was executed by the guillotine.  It was a complete wreck by the mid-19th century and Haussmann tore it down to make a park out of it.

As I walk through the park, with its pretty little lake and bird houses, I wonder if anybody else who spends time here ever thinks about these things.  I decide they probably don't.  I must be the only lunatic contemplating a king two centuries dead in the fading sunlight of a pretty October day in Paris!  The historian's curse, I guess.  But it's been a great "flaneur" wandering this pretty part of the city.  I pop into the "Temple" metro stop named for guess-what, and head for home, making sure to pick up a fresh baguette on my way back to my apartment.  Fresh bread, after all, is one of the true glories of France.