There was other proof of long-term habitation and family life, including a tomb with the skeletons of two children, ages five and nine, and a three-room, thirteen-by-twenty-six-foot-long house in the shape of a trapezoid. The archaeologists were certain that other houses had existed.
The ancient wood of the canoes survived because it marinated for centuries in layers of wet mud, sand, gravel, and peat in a humid climate without temperature extremes. Dry timber would have disintegrated. The archaeologists’ biggest challenge was preventing the boats from crumbling after they were exposed to air. Marquis and his team used a lawn sprinkler to keep the wood wet.
The archaeologists revealed their findings years later, only after they had studied, treated, and stabilized the wood of the canoes. Marquis and his team wanted more time to excavate, arguing that they could have unearthed more of the settlement. In 1993, City Hall officials renamed the street where the canoes had been found the rue des Pirogues de Bercy (street of the Canoes of Bercy). But progress trumped history, and a public park sprang up over the site. In 2000, the city of Paris unveiled the three best-preserved canoes, along with many of the artifacts, and celebrated their discovery as the city’s most spectacular archaeological find ever. Paris Mayor Jean Tiberi said the discovery revealed “the soul of Paris.”
I wanted to know more. I wanted to see the extraordinary pottery bowls and vases and the archer’s bow, but all the objects were hidden away in storage. There is no catalog of them, no public database.
“That’s awful,” I told Robin. “What a waste.”
She disagreed and reminded me of my good fortune. “You are really lucky to see the pirogue today,” she said. “If it were not so big, it would have been packed up and gone a long time ago.”
As it turned out, my timing was even better than that. The canoe may be too sensitive to permanent exposure to light to ever be put on public display again. I might have seen the most ancient evidence of the origins of Paris in a public space for the last time.
Robin told me that her own area of expertise was not prehistory but the history of France from the Gallo-Roman era through the Middle Ages. That got me thinking that I might have found an ally in my excitement about Sequana. Did Robin know about the ancient bronze statue of the goddess in Dijon?
“Of course!” she said. “She’s very beautiful.”
“You know her? Really? And the temple?” I asked.
“Yes! But have you been there?” she asked. “It’s complicated to find.”
“Of course!” I said. I told her about my passion for Sequana standing in the duck-shaped boat. “She is the goddess of healing!” I said. “With all the gloom in the United States and around the world right now, we must have another female healer—like Our Lady of Lourdes, only secular!”
For Robin, however, Sequana was merely a minor goddess of the provinces. In Paris, she said, one celebrates “les Nautes,” the armed and powerful river boatmen—the shipbuilders, ship owners, navigators, traders, and warehousemen—who predated the Roman invasion of Paris and won the right of self-government. Their name derives from the Greek word for sailors or boatmen.
“The Nautes are the great emblematic characters of Paris, a Gallic brotherhood,” Robin explained. “They were the great bourgeois traders of Lutetia, the armed Gallic boatmen of the Parisii tribe, and when the Romans came to colonize, the Nautes made an alliance with the Romans and took power on the Seine. Suddenly, they became very rich and powerful.”
“But they’re men!” I told Robin. “I want to celebrate a woman.”
Robin laughed. “Yes, but my Nautes are warriors,” she said.
She told me I could find vestiges of the Nautes at the Cluny Museum, on the Left Bank. The Cluny, a former medieval abbey built on the ruins of Lutetia’s Roman baths, displays, among other artifacts, the oldest Gallo-Roman monument in Paris, the Pillar of the Nautes. A seventeen-foot structure made from four blocks of stone, it was carved with bas-reliefs depicting both Celtic and Roman gods and erected at one of the temples of Lutetia in the first century a.d. It was discovered by accident in 1710, during the construction of a burial vault for the archbishops of Paris in the heart of Notre-Dame.
The pillar sits in the nearly fifty-foot-high vaulted frigidarium (“cold room”) of the baths. Each of its four blocks is mounted on stands of different sizes, making it easier to see the curved sculpted panels. In 2001, the blocks of pillar were restored, the black grime removed for the first time since their discovery. An inscription written in Latin with some Gallic flourishes revealed the structure’s purpose: the Nautes from the city of the Parisii built and paid for the pillar in honor of the god Jupiter, who stands powerful on the pillar with a spear in one hand and a thunderbolt in the other.
Some of the panels had worn away over time, others were complete. My eyes stopped on the most detailed one: a group of armed Nautes on a ship, floating on a body of water. How strange that one of the first known depictions of the Seine was so modest. The real subjects of the panel were the Nautes in their armor. The Nautes dominate; the river consists of a few simple waves at the bottom of the panel. Without the Seine, the courageous warrior-boatmen never would have existed.
HUMANS HAVE ALWAYS SETTLED and built cities along rivers, drawn to fresh water, fish, fertile land, and the ease of travel on water. The Seine was the servant that made Lutetia.
So much has been written about Lutetia, yet so little is known. The settlement the Romans found when they arrived was a muddy island village surrounded by water, cradled in a bend in the river, and protected by hills on both banks. The Parisii had already called it Lutetia, perhaps after the Celtic words luh (river), touez (in the middle), and y (house), which together mean “houses midstream,” or perhaps luto, meaning marsh or bog. In 53 b.c., Julius Caesar, the conqueror of Gaul, wrote that it was “a collection of fishermen’s huts on an island in the Seine.”
Lutetia was a pleasant place to live; the Parisii knew how to make wine and cheese, and they built fishing boats and developed a profitable river trade. Like the tribesmen known as the Sequani, who lived at the source of the Seine, they prayed that the river would make their farming and hunting bountiful. Navigation was so crucial to their survival that their symbol was a ship, which may have been the precursor to the vessel on the Paris coat of arms. They produced their own money, and one Parisii gold coin shows the head of the god Apollo in profile, with thick curls of hair that look like waves. The head rests on what appears to be a small stylized boat with a curved prow.
A coin with an engraving that is believed to be the head of the god Apollo. His head rests on what appears to be a small boat with a curved prow, and his flowing hair evokes an image of waves. BIBLIOTHèQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE.
The Parisii also knew the river’s dangers. By their time, the Seine had formed itself into a single river, twice its width today. The area that now includes the two islands of the Île de la Cité and the Île Saint-Louis, still the epicenter of Paris, stretched out as an archipelago of about ten islands. The Parisii drew maps of their settlement, highlighting the sandbanks and flood tides that made it treacherous.
In the Battle of Lutetia in 52 b.c., the invading Romans defeated the Parisii. The Romans discovered that the region’s plentiful limestone could be used to make a building material like concrete that was strong enough to support complex structures. They joined the islands to the mainland by bridges and expanded Lutetia to both banks, then built a medium-sized provincial town on a grid design. It started on the Île de la Cité and the Left Bank, with a fortress, a forum, an amphitheater, and thermal baths (which are now below the Cluny). The city spread over 284 acres, with a population of about five thousand people.
THE FIRST IMPORTANT FIGURE to record his love for the city was the military commander Julian the Apostate, who later became emperor. “I happened to be in winter quarters at my beloved Lutetia,” he wrote. “It is a small island lying in the river; a wall entirely surrounds it, and wooden bridges lead to
it on both sides. The river seldom rises and falls, but usually is the same depth in the winter as in the summer season, and it provides water which is very clear to the eye and very pleasant for one who wishes to drink. . . . The winter too is rather mild there. . . . And a good kind of vine grows thereabouts, and some persons have even managed to make fig trees grow by covering them in winter.”
Julian was enjoying his second winter in Lutetia, living happily in an imperial palace on the Île de la Cité, when his troops and the people of Lutetia proclaimed him emperor in the year 360. He made Lutetia the summer capital of the Roman Empire and renamed it civitas Parisiorum—City of the Parisii. This name was shortened to Paris sometime between the third to fifth century a.d.
The Parisiis’ town on the Île de la Cité was not their only settlement, and perhaps not their original one. In 2003, archaeologists with the governmental Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Préventives (INRAP) found evidence of a Gallic artisanal trading area from the time of the Parisii in the northwest suburb of Nanterre. Its vestiges indicate a densely populated urban center, more than twice the size of the Île de la Cité settlement. It had cobblestoned streets that ran parallel to each other; houses made of wood, mud, and straw, each with its own well; and drainage ditches that carried wastewater away from the town. The discovery of roasting spits and a cauldron fork suggest that the square plazas were used for communal banquets. Among the treasures found were amphoras, coins, tools, cooking pots, and jewelry, including bronze fibula brooches and bracelets, glass beads, and tubular necklaces that would have denoted high social status.
Since the discovery at Nanterre, archaeologists have debated which site was home to the original settlement: the Île de la Cité or Nanterre. Some of them believe that the site of the origin of Paris is still undiscovered, hidden somewhere in the basin of the river. What remains undisputed is that the Seine, with the Île de la Cité as a power center and natural fortress, became an ideal river for trade, one of the most important crossroads for all of Europe.
LOOK CAREFULLY anywhere in Paris and you will find tribute paid to the powerful river boatmen known as the Nautes on the city’s coat of arms. The emblem shows a sailing ship bouncing on the river’s waves below a fleur-de-lis design and above the motto Fluctuat nec mergitur—“She is tossed on the waves but does not sink.” The first official design of a ship sailing on the waves dates back to 1190, when Philippe II offered it to the city of Paris. It evolved into its current incarnation in 1358. The expression Fluctuat nec mergitur, which dates to the fourth century, when it was used by the Nautes, was added to the coat of arms in the sixteenth century.
The coat of arms adorns many public buildings, schools, train stations, and bridges. I have found it on the sides of wrought-iron-framed park benches and in a grand mosaic in the Hôtel de Ville Métro station on the No. 1 line. The Eiffel Tower bows to the Seine with a small metal depiction of the city’s ship, surrounded by pearl-like light bulbs, on one of its pillars. I have even seen the ship celebrated in a tattoo. The Australian boyfriend of one of my former research assistants had it imprinted on his chest before he returned home from a three-year stint as a Paris tour guide.
Fluctuat nec mergitur took on new meaning after the terrorist attacks on the night of Friday, November 13, 2015, when 130 people were killed and more than 400 injured. The Islamic State took credit for targeting eight sites in and around the city, including a sports stadium, the Bataclan concert hall, cafés, and bars. It was an attack on the French way of life, and Parisians responded with messages of defiance and resilience. fluctuat nec mergitur written in graffiti in huge block letters appeared in the place de la République and along the Canal Saint-Martin. Le Monde called it a “slogan of resistance.” In the ultimate show of solidarity, the motto and images of the seal of Paris were superimposed over the blue, white, and red of the French flag and projected on the Eiffel Tower.
The Seine turns up in other imagery throughout Paris. The symbol of the Paris Transit Authority is the curve of the Seine cutting through the circle of Paris. The curve is shaped like an upturned profile of a woman’s face, an official declaration of the river’s femininity. A stone fountain in the center of the place Saint-Georges at the corner of my street includes the relief of a débardeur, a nineteenth-century longshoreman who collected and sold pieces of discarded wood from the Seine’s muddy waters. The Musée du quai Branly looks from the outside like a hodgepodge of mismatched structures set in a lush, exotic jungle, but its six-hundred-foot-long permanent exhibition hall is designed to follow the bend in the river.
A 1930s building on the Quai de Conti, on the Left Bank, features a bas-relief with five allegorical figures evoking the river. Four are burly centaurs: “Religion” holding Notre-Dame Cathedral, “Marine Life” with a conch shell, “Trade” with a caduceus and cornucopia, and “Paris” carrying the city’s sailing ship. Front and center is the only human: “The Seine,” a tall, naked woman standing ramrod straight. Holding a long oar at her side, she plants her feet firmly in the water and gazes straight ahead, exulting in her power in the heart of the city.
Attached to my key chain is a good-luck charm: a colored enameled double medallion, one with the Paris coat of arms, the word “Paris” written on its sail, the other with the outline of Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. I found it at a neighborhood vide-grenier, what Americans would call a yard sale. It cost ten centimes.
Wandering through the Marché Serpette in the vast flea market north of Paris one Sunday afternoon, I came upon still another rendering of the Paris coat of arms—on a secondhand Hermès scarf. The classic silk square is patterned in red, blue, and gold on a black background, with the city’s coat of arms in the center and its motto written underneath. Twelve smaller coats of arms—each of them different, separated by images of threaded needles—encircle the main image. It was designed in 1954 and cost €175, about half the price of a new Hermès. Subtler than a Seine-themed tattoo, the scarf was a stylish reminder of the river and all it stands for.
Two years later, Andy found the stall in the flea market. The scarf was still there. He gave it to me for my birthday.
A view of Paris at night, with the Seine’s bridges and the Eiffel Tower illuminated. © GARY ZUERCHER, GLZ.COM, MARCORP EDITIONS, AND MARCORP-EDITIONS.COM.
NINE
The Beating Heart of Paris
The Pont Neuf is to the city what
the heart is to the body: the center of
movement and circulation.
—LOUIS-SÉBASTIEN MERCIER,
Tableau de Paris
IT TOOK A BRIDGE to make a city. Henri IV made it happen. The year was 1598. The king had ended the Wars of Religion by signing the Edict of Nantes, a visionary act of reconciliation that gave France’s one million Protestants religious and civil freedoms. Twelve years later, Henri would be assassinated. But in that moment of peace, France was united, and Paris was his. He celebrated by fulfilling a dream of his brother-in-law and predecessor Henri III: to build the first bridge spanning the Seine across the Île de la Cité, uniting the three disconnected parts of Paris—the Left Bank, the Right Bank, and the island between them that defined the heart of the city. In constructing it, Henri IV created an intimate, permanent bond between Parisians and the lifeblood of their city, the Seine.
A triumph of design, architecture, and technology, the Pont Neuf was so revolutionary that Henri IV inaugurated it in 1607 by crossing it on a white stallion. Today, it is still the oldest bridge in Paris, but it was so modern at the time that it was given the name “New Bridge.” At 72 feet wide, it was built broader than any of the city’s streets. At 761 feet long, it was and still is the longest of the Paris’s 35 main bridges (there are 37 in all, if you count the ring road around Paris that crosses the river upstream at Charenton/Bercy and downstream at Saint-Cloud/Issy).
Before the Pont Neuf, Paris bridges were built at least partially in wood, which made them weak and vulnerable to destruction
by fire and floods. Since the Middle Ages, bridges were cluttered and weighed down by houses whose owners paid for the right to build there. For example, the Pont Notre-Dame, built before the Pont Neuf, was lined with houses on both sides, which made it too narrow and crowded for traffic.
The Pont Neuf was the first bridge in the city to be built entirely of stone, making it much sturdier than the other four bridges in Paris. Instead of houses, there were paved, raised walkways—the first on a Paris bridge—and the first sidewalks in Paris. The most renowned Renaissance architects took charge of embellishing it, engraving twelve low structural arches with nearly four hundred stone masks. The mascarons were relics of a traditional method of warding off evil spirits; they depicted barbers, dentists, pickpockets, loiterers, and more.
Henri IV’s victory project would turn out to alter the architecture of the city in ways he couldn’t have predicted. As part of the bridge-building project, two small islands, Île du Patriarche and Île aux Juifs, were joined to the Île de la Cité, enlarging its surface and making room for the Seine to flow more easily. Even today, the Pont Neuf has the feel of a bridge that holds the city together.
THE PONT NEUF became the most identifiable symbol of Paris, a sort of Eiffel Tower of the Ancien Régime. It also became a social and cultural hub for tout Paris. People came just to see the river from a bridge that finally offered unobstructed views. The vista was so exceptional that the seventeenth-century travel writer François Bernier proclaimed it “the most beautiful and magnificent view in the entire world.” On the bridge you could have a tooth pulled, take a fencing lesson, watch a bullfight, enlist in the army. Vendors loudly hawked their goods—hot coffee, chilled oysters, Italian oranges, and live poultry; skin whiteners, wooden legs, glass eyes, false teeth. They competed for space and attention with acrobats, pickpockets, prostitutes, umbrella renters, sellers of secondhand books, and charlatans who hoodwinked passersby with promises of miracle cures.
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