Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [8]
Paris’ strategic riverside position ensured its importance throughout the Middle Ages, although settlement remained centred on the Île de la Cité, with the rive gauche (left bank) to the south given over to fields and vineyards; the Marais area on the rive droite (right bank) to the north was a waterlogged marsh. The first guilds were established in the 11th century, and rapidly grew in importance; in the mid-12th century the ship merchants’ guild bought the principal river port, by today’s Hôtel de Ville (city hall), from the crown.
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GOING UP & UP
The 12th and 13th centuries were a time of frenetic building activity in Paris. Abbot Suger, both confessor and minister to several Capetian kings, was one of the powerhouses of this period; in 1136 he commissioned the basilica at St-Denis. Less than three decades later, work started on the cathedral of Notre Dame, the greatest creation of medieval Paris. At the same time Philippe-Auguste (r 1180–1223) expanded the city wall, adding 25 gates and hundreds of protective towers.
The Marais, whose name means ‘swamp’, was drained for agricultural use and settlement moved to the north (or right) bank of the Seine. this would soon become the mercantile centre, especially around place de Grève (today’s place de l’Hôtel de Ville). The food markets at Les Halles first came into existence in 1183 and the Louvre began its existence as a riverside fortress in the 13th century. In a bid to do something about the city’s horrible traffic congestion and stinking excrement (the population numbered about 200,000 by the year 1200), Philippe-Auguste paved four of Paris’ main streets for the first time since the Roman occupation, using metre-square sandstone blocks. By 1292 Paris counted 352 streets, 10 squares and 11 crossroads.
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The area south of the Seine – today’s Left Bank – was by contrast developing not as a trade centre but as the centre of European learning and erudition, particularly in the so-called Latin Quarter. The ill-fated lovers Pierre Abélard and Héloïse (boxed text) wrote the finest poetry of the age and their treatises on philosophy, and Thomas Aquinas taught at the new University of Paris. About 30 other colleges were established, including the Sorbonne.
In 1337 some three centuries of hostility between the Capetians and the Anglo-Normans degenerated into the Hundred Years’ War, which would be fought on and off until the middle of the 15th century. The Black Death (1348–49) killed more than a third (an estimated 80,000 souls) of Paris’ population but only briefly interrupted the fighting. Paris would not see its population reach 200,000 again until the beginning of the 16th century.
The Hundred Years’ War and the plague, along with the development of free, independent cities elsewhere in Europe, brought political tension and open insurrection to Paris. In 1358 the provost of the merchants, a wealthy draper named Étienne Marcel, allied himself with peasants revolting against the dauphin (the future Charles V) and seized Paris in a bid to limit the power of the throne and secure a city charter. But the dauphin’s supporters recaptured it within two years, and Marcel and his followers were executed at place de Grève. Charles then completed the right-bank city wall begun by Marcel and turned the Louvre into a sumptuous palace for himself.
After the French forces were defeated by the English at Agincourt in 1415, Paris was once again embroiled in revolt. The dukes of Burgundy, allied with the English, occupied the capital in 1420. Two years later John Plantagenet, duke of Bedford, was installed as regent of France for the English king, Henry VI, who was then an infant. Henry was crowned king of France at Notre Dame