The island of the Cité, the historical heart of Paris, its oldest part. From here began a great city with two thousand years of history.

For the first time about this place mentions Julius Caesar in "Notes on the Gallic war," the proconsul sent here four Legion against the tribe parisii, whose "island Sequani" there was a fortified town of Lutetia. Parisi, faced with superior military power of the Romans burned the city with its bridges.

In the first century, when Gallium was annexed to Rome, conquerors revived the Lutetium. Across the island took the Roman road, along which troops and goods moved in the direction of Britain, the westernmost Outpost of the Empire. In the III century the threat of attacks of the barbarians forced the city to shrink in size and completely move on a Sieve, under the protection of a defensive wall. In the IV century city, located on the island, first called Paris.

Around the same time, there arises the Christian community. In the layer of soil beneath the Notre-Dame-de-Paris found in the ruins of the Basilica of Saint-étienne – Church Merovingian times. In the beginning of VI century legendary Clovis I moves the capital of the state of francs in Paris, and Hildebert builds I here the Basilica of Saint Stephen – in its place several centuries later will be erected the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Robert II the Pious erects Sieve the Royal Palace, and St. Louis builds a chapel of Sainte Chapelle, which places the sacred relics brought by crusaders from Constantinople.

The small island of century after century amassed untold treasures. By the time of the French revolution there were two dozen magnificent churches, palaces, old private home. But in the nineteenth century restless prefect of Paris, Baron Haussmann decisively demolished all the buildings located between the Royal Palace and Notre-Dame de Paris. Here were built the new police building and commercial Tribunal, laid three straight streets, continued bridges.

New Cité is not the old medieval Cité. But it is still beautiful. With the mainland and the island of Saint-Louis is connected by nine bridges, from which a splendid panorama. Monuments Cité Notre-Dame Cathedral, Sainte Chapelle, the Conciergerie, the Palais de Justice – attract tourists at any time of the year.