s o m m a i r e s e p t e m b r e Les Halles Decision Euro Aug 14: .739 La Gazzetta Euro June 13: .751 Longshots at Longchamp Rain Days: 13 Pinacothèque PARIS High Temp: 70°F/21°C La Chalcographie Low Temp: 53°F/12°C He Rode a White Horse n o t e s Nat’l Holidays: none September 2007 P Volume 16 Issue 7 New New Bridge By Mary McAuliffe After years of painstaking renovation, the old Pont Neuf—New Bridge—is like new again leaned against the protective fencing along lined with houses and jammed with mills from sweeping downstream yet again and this the Quai du Louvre, watching the workmen between their piles. One of these bridges lasted time taking the Pont St-Michel with it. I below me chip away at the block-and-mortar for almost a century, but another collapsed after The last of this early bunch of bridges was underpinning of the Pont Neuf, or New Bridge. only 16 years. the Pont Notre Dame, which in the early 15th The four-centuries-old span across the Seine In the meantime, the tiny Petit Pont, link- century finally replaced the link (the original was once the newest bridge in Paris; now it’s the ing the island with the Left Bank, was having Grand Pont) that had gone missing all those city’s oldest. Or is it? an exceptionally rough time. For centuries it years before. It was an important link, directly History certainly is on the Pont Neuf’s remained a wooden structure, burdened with connecting the harbor and commercial district side. Its genesis goes back to the reign of of the Right Bank with the Ile de la Cité Henri III, who laid its first stone in 1578. and the Left Bank. Yet no one seemed to According to a 1577 painting in the Musée have paid much attention to the centuries Carnavalet, based on a design approved by of disasters that preceded this bridge, and the king, this bridge was from the outset amazingly enough, the first Pont Notre conceived as a break with the past. Unlike Dame was made of wood. Not only that, its neighboring bridges (which can also be it was poorly built and encumbered with glimpsed in the painting), this one would 65 houses as well as a full complement of not have houses crowding each side. Nor mills between its piles. But despite years of would it rest precariously on wooden warning signs, nothing significant was done stilts. Instead, it would be house free, built to prevent disaster, which at last struck in of stone and solidly supported by stone 1499, when a flood carried away the bridge arches. and its many houses. Now at last willing to Spanning the Seine had never been an think sensibly, the city reconstructed the easy task, and the king and his engineers bridge in stone. had a wealth of bad examples to avoid. Thus when the idea of a new span From the outset, the islanded center of across the Seine arose, it was this thought- Paris had been linked to both the Right and Left houses and vulnerable to the fierce floods that provoking history that led Henri III’s engineers banks by wooden bridges, at the present sites of repeatedly swept it downstream (some six times to consider an entirely new kind of bridge. A the Petit Pont and the Pont Notre Dame. These between 1196 and 1326). It certainly was not bridge without mills (mills, after all, interfered repeatedly succumbed to flood and fire, and at a safe place to live, but Paris was crowded, and with the natural flow of the current, sometimes length the original Grand Pont (at today’s Pont people persisted in taking their chances. As disastrously). A bridge without houses (some- Notre Dame) underwent so many disasters that the years went on and the population crunch thing that would not transform the other bridges Parisians finally abandoned it, building another intensified, these bridge houses grew taller and of Paris until 1786, when their houses were bridge just to the west. taller—some five stories high, according to a taken down). A bridge built solidly of stone. A This created a strange dogleg route for model of early Paris in the Musée Carnavalet. thing of beauty, and a source of civic and royal those wishing to cross what now is the Ile de la No wonder that this top-heavy load so easily pride. Cité. But the new Grand Pont (which eventu- collapsed under raging floodwaters. The king was pleased with the idea. After all, ally became known as the Pont au Change, It was only the construction of the Pont a bridge was certainly needed at the western end named for the moneychangers who crowded St-Michel, just a bit downstream, that won the of the island. For years, the only way across the its span) was there to stay. Louis VI emphati- Petit Pont a reprieve. The Pont St-Michel, com- Seine in this part of town was a ferry (the name cally underscored this point by fortifying the pleted in 1387, was a new and modern bridge, Rue du Bac retains this memory). But, unlike bridge’s entrance with a stone defensive gate, built of stone and designed to link the Grand earlier bridges, which spanned the Seine at its the Châtelet, and by reconstructing the entire Pont (or Pont au Change) in a direct line with narrowest point, this one would have a broad bridge of stone. This not only protected the city the Left Bank. The Pont St-Michel was a source stretch of water to cover. Another difficulty from marauders, but also gave some permanence of immense pride, and its safety and welfare would be crossing the marshy tip of the Ile de to the bridge itself, which lasted a good century required extraordinary measures. So after careful la Cité, which drifted into inconsequential and and a half before collapsing in floodwaters. Its consideration, the Petit Pont was now rebuilt in flood-prone islets. successors, although also made of stone, were stone; not on its own merits, but to prevent it Henri III’s elabo- (continued on page 7) New New Bridge, continued from page 1 of the period. By 1990, barely a century after the Pont While Parisians and tourists enjoyed them- Neuf’s last renovation, another was needed. rate scheme, as captured by that 1577 painting, selves along the Pont Neuf’s walkways, business The ancient bridge was now withstanding never came to pass—at least, not quite as he (or was being conducted as usual at a lower level. velocities and weights that its original architects the artist) originally imagined it. The religious Here mills floated, moored to the bridge’s could never have imagined. The goal was to and civil warfare that had been tearing France piles—much as with the other bridges along complete this massive project by 2007, the apart continued unabated, and in 1589, the the river’s northern arm. But these hazards 400th anniversary of the Pont Neuf’s original king himself was murdered. Henri of Navarre, eventually disappeared, as did the Pont Neuf’s inauguration. champion of the Huguenots, or French Protes- public baths, which were popular during the And so the huge project began. Of all its tants, claimed the crown but had to fight for it. 18th century. many requirements, the most delicate certainly After unsuccessfully besieging Paris, he at length During these years, the Pont Neuf did its was the replacement, once again, of the many agreed to convert to Catholicism—a shrewd bit to increase the quantity of drinking water mascarons. Because who could possibly picture move that ensured him his coronation as Henri available to the Louvre and its surrounding the Pont Neuf without its mascarons? With IV. Thoroughly pragmatic, this Henri had no neighborhood. Soon after the bridge’s comple- this in mind, workers laboriously made casts problem with a purely political solution to vir- tion, Henri IV had a huge water pump built of each of these fabulous grotesques, allowing tual anarchy. Paris, as he so famously remarked, on its western side. It was promptly named sculptors to create faithful reproductions. was well worth a Mass. the Samaritaine—eventually lending its name Stone for the entire renovation—a creamy Not until 1599 did work on the Pont Neuf to the department store that, more than two white limestone closely resembling that used in really begin—this time under the aegis of a king centuries later, became a Paris landmark. The the bridge’s original construction—was specially who dearly loved Paris and who already selected from the quarry of Saint-Pierre- was embarked on a massive building Aigle, situated northeast of Paris. Once program to enhance her beauty. Henri IV extracted, each stone was rough-hewn and retained his predecessor’s expansive vision, shaped for its particular spot, and then if not his exact specifications, and soon put into place via three-level scaffolding the waterlogged area at the Cité’s tip was reaching from water level to bridge-top. drained and the islets joined into what Like me, you probably have watched is now the much-loved Square du Vert- this scaffolding inch its way along from Galant. A massive terrace was then built the Left Bank to the Right for the past to support the central portion of the new few—or should I say many—years. bridge—a striking stone structure com- Reconstruction began on the shorter pleted in 1607.