Île de la Cité

This guide to Île de la Cité in Paris starts at the bronze star marking kilometre zero, then reaches back to the Parisii, the Celtic tribe that settled this island roughly two thousand years ago. It follows Marie Antoinette's seventy-six days held in a cell at the Conciergerie in 1793, and Baron Haussmann's demolition of the medieval neighborhood here a half century later, which displaced twenty thousand residents. Stand at the Conciergerie's facade and listen for the same river the Parisii once crossed.