The history behind the experience

Paris was born on the banks of a river. Ever since the Neolithic, people have settled here, drawn by the promise of water, fish, fertile land and natural travel routes. The Seine is the connecting thread of the Origins of Paris experience. In this companion guide, we retrace each era for you, so you can delve deeper into what you discovered during your visit.

For a long time, history placed the Parisii — the Gaulish people who gave Paris its name — on the Île de la Cité, long regarded as the cradle of the city. But the archaeological discoveries of recent decades have overturned that certainty. It was in fact near Nanterre, west of today's capital, that the remains of a vast Gaulish settlement were unearthed — one already thriving in the 3rd century BC.

A dugout canoe discovered at the Bercy site, now on display at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris. Neolithic period, between 2880 and 2500 BC — long before the arrival of the Parisii.

A depiction of part of the Gaulish village of Nanterre (also known as Nemetodorum). © EPI 78-92 / Archaeology Department / Sandrine Lefèvre 2020

Gaulish coinage. A stater of the Parisii.

In the Origins of Paris experience, our intention for this era was to convey just how marshy the Right Bank of the Seine once was. Who, in those earliest days, could have imagined that this vast marshland would one day become the capital of France?

It was the Romans who laid the city's foundations.

When the Romans settled here in the 1st century BC, they transformed a scattered Gaulish territory into a true city: Lutetia. No longer a mere cluster of dwellings along the river, it became a planned, ordered city built in stone. The forum, the baths, the theatre, the paved streets and the cardo maximus gave shape to the urban space. Hills such as Sainte-Geneviève became major sites of settlement.

A bird's-eye view of Lutetia, created by Timescope. As you can see, the Gallo-Roman city grew mainly on the Left Bank of the river — higher ground, and far less marshy.

Detail of a Roman ship in London — the stern. We studied many visual sources in order to faithfully recreate the Roman ships of the Lutetia era in the Origins of Paris experience.

The theatre, as depicted by Timescope.

The Forum, reconstructed in 3D by Timescope. Now vanished, this was the beating heart of public life in Lutetia.

A scene from the Origins of Paris experience, on the banks of the Seine in the age of Lutetia (225 AD).

The Vikings had already raided Paris several times, but the siege of 885 remains the most memorable. Several hundred ships encircled the Île de la Cité, the fortified heart of the city. For more than a year, the people of Paris held out with great courage, led by Count Odo. Despite famine and relentless assaults, the city did not fall. The siege has gone down in history as a symbol of Parisian defiance in the face of the invader. The monk Abbo of Saint-Germain left a first-hand account of the Viking siege of Paris — there is a podcast well worth a listen on the subject.

An iconic monument, visible from the banks of the Seine and impossible to leave out of an experience about the history of Paris: the cathedral of Notre-Dame. What struck us as compelling in the Origins of Paris experience was to convey the sheer scale of the undertaking it represented — two centuries of work in the very heart of the city!

The bank of the Seine in the 14th century. Notre-Dame was far more visible from the riverside back then, as buildings were lower in the Middle Ages.

Notre-Dame under construction in the Origins experience. The cathedral of Paris was built between 1163 and 1345.

The epidemic — caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis, most likely brought from Central Asia — reached Paris aboard merchant ships and, within a few weeks, swept through an overcrowded city of nearly 200,000 inhabitants. Transmitted mainly by rat fleas, it announced itself with painful buboes, high fevers and haemorrhages, carrying off between a third and a half of all Parisians and forcing authorities and citizens alike to bury, at times, more than 500 bodies a day. This crisis, which lasted until 1351, brought a temporary collapse of urban life and foreshadowed profound social upheavals, opening the way to the transition into modern Europe.

Strange masks for the plague doctors. The famous long-beaked mask, invented in 1619 by Charles de Lorme to filter out the 'miasmas', does not appear in the Origins experience, since it came along well after the epidemic of 1348.

Visual depictions of the plague — engravings, frescoes and paintings such as the Danse Macabre or the Triumph of Death — often rendered terror and despair through striking scenes of skeletal corpses, funeral processions and allegorical figures, capturing the emotional shockwave that swept through medieval societies.

The city is reborn. The population grows. Paris takes shape…

In the 16th century, under François I, Paris opened up to the new forms of the Italian Renaissance, and the Place de Grève — the civic and judicial heart of the capital — embodied this renewal. Lined with newly dressed façades of harmonious proportion, it saw the rise of a new Hôtel de Ville inspired by Florentine palaces, hosted lavish festivities and became the setting for official ceremonies celebrating royal power and the triumph of the humanist arts. At once a trading crossroads, a place of political assembly and the public stage for executions, the Place de Grève was transformed into an urban space that spelled out the ambitions of a Paris resolutely turned towards modernity.

A scene from the experience at the Place de Grève. The city's central port at a time when Paris was growing — gaining in population and political power — the square was known to every Parisian. Goods were unloaded here and carried on to Les Halles.

A depiction of the Place de Grève by Hoffbauer, with the Hôtel de Ville at its centre.

A crowd gathered on the Place de Grève to watch an execution (Timescope 3D).

Goods being unloaded at the Place de Grève — a Timescope model.

The centre of the Place de Grève — historical archive.

On the night of 23–24 October 1621, a fierce fire — which broke out in the stalls on the wooden deck of the neighbouring Pont Marchand — spread to the Pont au Change, consuming its piers and shops before residents and the city watch finally brought it under control. This dramatic episode prompted the city's money changers to fund, from 1639 onwards, the bridge's reconstruction in stone — sturdier and far safer.

In the Origins of Paris experience, we wanted to look at the Canal des Cagnards — which no longer exists today — through the lens of the city's underworld: to tell the story of just how unsafe Paris could be before the 18th-century invention of the reverberatory street lamp, which changed everything.

The vault of the Quai de Gesvres — a depiction by Auguste Regnier.

The Canal des Cagnards recreated in the Origins of Paris VR experience. It is dark, and brigands have gathered in the shadows.

The Seine is the connecting thread of the Origins experience. We thought it worth telling that people swam in it — even then! — but also recounting a few unusual chapters of history, like the winter of 1880, when a cold spell grew so fierce that it froze the river over.

A photograph of the frozen Seine in the winter of 1879–1880. 'The winter of 1879–1880 was remarkable for the extreme severity of the cold; for most of our rivers it brought freezes and break-ups the like of which had not been seen for nearly a century' (Lalanne and G. Lemoine, 1881).

2025 — the year the Origins of Paris experience launched — is also the year Parisians can once again swim in the Seine, a pastime they enjoyed with such delight a century ago!

One of the harshest ordeals the city of Paris has ever faced.

The Seine flood of 1910, known as the hundred-year flood, remains one of the most striking inundations since that of 1658. It submerged much of the Seine valley, causing major disruption across Paris. Though it claimed few lives, this natural disaster did considerable economic damage throughout the region. On 28 January 1910, the river reached a record level of 8.62 metres on the gauge at the Pont d'Austerlitz. For several weeks, many Parisian neighbourhoods remained under water. The waters rose over some ten days, followed by a slow retreat that stretched out over roughly 35 days.

To get supplies, Parisians made do however they could. Patrice de Moncan — 'Paris inondé — La grande inondation de 1910', éd. du Mécène.

It was also one of the first natural disasters ever to be photographed.

The Eiffel Tower brings the Origins of Paris experience to a close. Built for the 1889 World's Fair, it marked Paris's entry into the modern age. Conceived as a temporary feat of engineering, it became a lasting symbol. Across the 20th century its role kept changing: radio antenna, tourist landmark, laboratory for experiment. This final chapter shows how the Tower became the icon of Paris — then and now.