Paris in the 17th century was the largest city in Europe, with a population of half a million, matched in size only by London. It was ruled in turn by three monarchs; Henry IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV, and saw the building of some of the city's most famous parks and monuments, including the Pont Neuf, the Palais Royal, the newly joined Louvre and Tuileries Palace, the Place des Vosges, and the Luxembourg Garden. It was also a flourishing center of French science and the arts; it saw the founding of the Paris Observatory, the French Academy of Sciences and the first botanical garden in Paris, which also became the first park in Paris open to the public. The first permanent theater opened, the Comédie-Française was founded, and the first French opera and French ballets had their premieres. Paris became the home of the new Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and of some of France's most famous writers, including Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, La Fontaine and Moliere. Urban innovations for the city included the first street lighting, the first public transport, the first building code, and the first new aqueduct since the Roman era.
Paris under Henry IV At the end of the 16th century, Paris was the last fortress of the besieged Catholic League, defended by the soldiers of the King of Spain and the fervently Catholic population. The royalist army of Henry IV had defeated the Catholic League on the battlefield, and Henry's soldiers were bombarding Paris from the heights of Montmartre and Montfaucon, but, lacking heavy artillery he could not break through the massive walls of the city. He decided instead upon a dramatic gesture to win over the Parisians; on July 25, 1593, at the Abbey of Saint-Denis, Henry IV formally renounced his Protestant faith. In the following weeks, the support for the Catholic League melted away. The Governor of Paris and the Provost of the merchants secretly joined Henry's side, and on March 2 the leader of the League, Charles de Mayenne, fled the city, followed by his Spanish soldiers. On March 22, 1594, Henry IV triumphantly entered the city, ending a war that had lasted for thirty years.
Once established in Paris, Henry worked to reconcile himself with the leaders of the Catholic Church. He decreed toleration of the Protestants with the Edict of Nantes, and imposed an end to the war with Spain and Savoy. To govern the city, he named Francois Miron, a loyal and energetic administrator, as the new lieutenant of the Chatelet (effectively the chief of police) from 1604 until 1606, and then as Provost of the Merchants, the highest administrative post, from 1606 until 1612. He named Jacques Sanguin, another effective administrator, to be Provost of the Merchants from 1606 to 1612.
Paris had suffered greatly during the wars of religion; a third of the Parisians had fled; the population was estimated to be 300,000 in 1600. Many houses were destroyed, and the grand projects of the Louvre, the Hôtel de Ville, and the Tuileries Palace were unfinished. Henry began a series of major new projects to improve the functioning and appearance of the city, and to win over the Parisians to his side. The Paris building projects of Henry IV were managed by his forceful superintendent of buildings, a Protestant and a general, Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully.
Henry IV recommenced the construction of the Pont Neuf, which had been begun by Henry III in 1578, but had stopped during the wars of religion. It was finished between 1600 and 1607, and was the first Paris bridge without houses and with sidewalks. Near the bridge, he built La Samaritaine (1602–1608), a large pumping station which provided drinking water, as well as water for the gardens of the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens.
Henry and his builders also decided to add an innovation to the Paris cityscape; three new residential squares, modeled after those in Italian Renaissance cities. On the vacant site of the old royal residence of Henri II, the Hôtel des Tournelles, he built an elegant new residential square surrounded by brick houses and an arcade. It was built between 1605 and 1612, and was named Place Royale, renamed Place des Vosges in 1800. In 1607, he began work on a new residential triangle, Place Dauphine, lined by thirty-two brick and stone houses, near the end of the Île de la Cité. A third square, Place de France, was planned for a site near the old Temple, but was never built.
Place Dauphine was Henry's last project for the city of Paris. The more fervent factions of the Catholic hierarchy in Rome and in France had never accepted Henry's authority, and there were seventeen unsuccessful attempts to kill him. The eighteenth attempt, on May 14, 1610, by François Ravaillac, a Catholic fanatic, while the King's carriage was blocked in traffic on rue de la Ferronnerie, was successful. Four years later, a bronze equestrian statue of the murdered king was erected on the bridge he had constructed at the Île de la Cité western point, looking toward Place Dauphine.
Paris under Louis XIII
Louis XIII was a few months short of his ninth birthday when his father was assassinated. His mother, Marie de' Medici, became Regent and ruled France in his name. She retained many of the ministers of Henry IV, but dismissed the most talented, Sully, because of his abrasive personality. She filled the royal council instead with nobles from her native Florence, including Concino Concini, the husband of one of her ladies in waiting, Leonora Dori, who served the superstitious Queen by performing exorcisms and white magic to undo curses and black magic. Concini became head of the royal council.
Marie de' Medicis decided to build a residence for herself, the Luxembourg Palace, on the sparsely populated left bank. It was constructed between 1615 and 1630, and modelled after the Pitti Palace in Florence. She commissioned the most famous painter of the period, Peter Paul Rubens, to decorate the interior with huge canvases of her life with Henry IV (now on display in the Louvre). She ordered the construction of a large Italian Renaissance garden around her palace, and commissioned a Florentine fountain-maker, Tommaso Francini, to create the Medici Fountain. Water was scarce in the Left Bank, one reason that part of the city had grown more slowly than the Right Bank. To provide water for her gardens and fountains, Marie de Medicis had the old Roman aqueduct from Rungis reconstructed. Thanks largely to her presence on the left bank, and the availability of water, noble families began to build houses on the left bank, in a neighborhood that became known as the Faubourg Saint-Germain. In 1616, she created another reminder of Florence on the right bank; the Cours la Reine, a long tree-shaded promenade along the Seine west of the Tuileries Gardens.
Louis XIII entered his fourteenth year in 1614, and was officially an adult, but his mother and her favorite, Concini, refused to allow him to lead the Royal Council. On April 24, 1617, Louis had his captain of the guards assassinate Concini at the Louvre. Concini's wife was charged with sorcery, beheaded and then burned at that stake on the Place de Greve. Concini's followers were chased from Paris. Louis exiled his mother to the Château de Blois in the Loire Valley. Louis made his own favorite, Charles d'Albert, the Duke of Luynes, the new head of the council, and launched a new campaign to persecute the Protestants. The Duke of Luynes died during an unsuccessful military campaign against the Protestants in Montauban.
Marie de' Medici managed to escape from her exile in the Château de Bois, and was reconciled with her son. Louis tried several different heads of government before finally selecting the Cardinal de Richelieu, a protege of his mother, in April 1624. Richelieu quickly showed his military skills and gift for political intrigue by defeating the Protestants at La Rochelle in 1628 and by executing or sending into exile several high-ranking nobles who challenged his authority.
In 1630, Marie de' Medici quarreled again with Richelieu, and demanded that her son choose between Richelieu or her. For a day (called by historians the "Day of the dupes") it appeared that she had won, but the next day Louis XIII invited Richelieu to the château de Vincennes and gave him his full support. Marie de' Medici was exiled to Compiegne, then went to live in exile in Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne, where she died in 1642. Richelieu turned his attention to completing and beginning new projects for the improvement of Paris. Between 1614 and 1635, four new bridges were built over the Seine; the Pont Marie, the Pont de la Tournelle, the Pont au Double, and the Pont Barbier. Two small islands in the Seine, the Île Notre-Dame and the Île-aux-vaches, which had been used for grazing cattle and storing firewood, were combined to make the Île Saint-Louis, which became the site of the splendid hôtels particuliers of Parisian financiers.
Louis XIII and Richelieu continued the rebuilding of the Louvre project begun by Henri IV. In the center of the old medieval fortress, where the great round tower had been, he created the harmonious Cour Carrée, or square courtyard, with its sculpted facades. In 1624, Richelieu began construction of a palatial new residence for himself in the center of the city, the Palais-Cardinal, which on his death was willed to the King and became the Palais-Royal. He began by buying a large mansion, the Hôtel de Rambouillet, to which he added an enormous garden, three times larger than the present Palais-Royal garden, ornamented with a fountain in the center, flowerbeds and rows of ornamental trees, and surrounded by arcades and buildings. In 1629, once the construction of the new palace was underway, land was cleared and construction of a new residential neighborhood began nearby, the quartier Richelieu, near the Porte Saint-Honoré. Other members of the Nobility of the Robe (mostly members of government councils and the courts) built their new residences in the Marais, close to the Place Royale.
Richelieu helped introduce a new religious architectural style into Paris, inspired by the famous churches in Rome, particularly the church of the Jesuits, and the Basilica of Saint Peter. The first façade built in the Jesuit style was that of the church of Saint-Gervais (1616); the first church entirely built in the new style was Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, on rue Saint-Antoine in the Marais between 1627 and 1647. The hearts of both Louis XIII and Louis XIV were interred there.
Richelieu also built a new chapel for the Sorbonne, for which he had been the proviseur, or head of the college. It was constructed between 1635 and 1642. The dome was inspired by dome of Saint Peter's in Rome, which also inspired the domes at the churches of Val-de-Grace and Les Invalides. The plan was taken from another Roman church, San Carlo ai Catinari. When Richelieu died, the church became his final resting place.
During the first part of the regime of Louis XIII Paris prospered and expanded, but the beginning of French involvement in the Thirty Years' War against the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs in 1635 brought heavy new taxes and hardships. The French Army was defeated by the Habsburg-ruled Spanish on August 15, 1636, and for several months a Spanish army threatened Paris. The King and Richelieu became increasingly unpopular with the Parisians. Richelieu died in 1642, and Louis XIII six months later in 1643. The playwright and poet Pierre Corneille described the feelings of Parisians toward the King and his government in a sonnet written shortly after the King's death; "In his name, ambition, pride, audacity and avarice made our laws: and while He was himself the most just of Kings, injustice ruled throughout his reign."
Paris under Louis XIV
Turmoil and the Fronde