The Palais de la Cité (), located on the Seine River's Île de la Cité, is a major historic building in the centre of Paris, France. It was an occasional residence of the Kings of France from the early 6th to the 12th century and a permanent one from the late 12th to the 14th century, and has been the center of the French justice system ever since, for which it is also referred to as the Palais de Justice.
From the 14th century until the French Revolution, the Palais was the headquarters of the Parlement of Paris. During the Revolution it served as a courthouse and prison, where Marie Antoinette and other prisoners were held and tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal. Since the early 19th century, it has been the seat of the Tribunal de grande instance de Paris, the Court of Appeal of Paris, and the Court of Cassation. The first of these moved to another Parisian location in 2018, while the latter two jurisdictions remain located in the Palais de la Cité as of 2025.
The palace was built up and restructured many times over the course of many centuries, including following major fires in 1618, 1776 and 1871. Its salient medieval remains are the Sainte-Chapelle, a masterpiece of Gothic architecture, and the Conciergerie, an early-14th-century palatial complex that served as a prison from 1380 to 1914. Most of its other current structures were rebuilt from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. The Conciergerie and Sainte-Chapelle can be visited via separate entrances.
History
Roman Empire and Early Middle Ages Archeological excavations have found traces of human habitation on the Île de la Cité from 5000 BC until the beginning of the Iron Age, but no evidence that the Celtic inhabitants, the Parisii, used the island as their capital. Julius Caesar recorded meeting with the leaders of the Parisii and other Celtic tribes on the island in 53 B.C., but no archeological evidence of the Parisii has been found there.de Parseval and Mazeau (2019), p. 2 However, after the Romans conquered the Parisii in the first century BC, the island was developed quickly. While the forum and largest part of the Roman town, called Lutetia, was on the left bank, a large temple was located on the east end of the island, where the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris is found today. The west end of the island was residential, and was the site of the palace of the Roman prefects, or governors. The palace was a Gallo-Roman fortress surrounded by ramparts. In the year 360 AD, the Roman caesar Julian the Apostate was declared Emperor of Rome by his soldiers while he was resident in the city.
Beginning in the 6th century, the Merovingian kings used the palace as their residence when they were in Paris. Clovis, the king of the Franks, lived in the palace from 508 until his death in 511. The kings who followed him, the Carolingians, moved their capital to the eastern part of their empire, and paid little attention to Paris. At the end of the 9th century, after a series of invasions by the Vikings threatened the city, King Charles the Bald had the walls rebuilt and strengthened. Hugh Capet (941-996), the Count of Paris, was elected king of France on 3 July 987, and resided in the fortress when he was in Paris, but he and the other Capetian kings spent little time in the city, and had other royal residences in Vincennes, Compiègne and Orleans. The administration and archives of the kingdom travelled wherever the king went.
High Middle Ages
Early Capetian era
At the beginning of the Capetian dynasty, the king of France ruled directly little more than what is now the Île-de-France; but through a policy of conquest and intermarriage, they began to expand the royal domain, and to transform the old Gallo-Roman fortress into a real palace. Robert the Pious, the son of Hugh Capet, who ruled from 996 to 1031, stayed in Paris more often than his predecessors. He rebuilt the fortress in particular to meet the demands of his third wife, Constance of Arles, for greater comfort. Robert reinforced the old walls and added fortified gates; the main entrance, most likely, was on the north side. The walls surrounded a rectangle 130 meters long and 110 meters wide. Within the walls Robert had constructed the Salle de Roi, the meeting room for the Curia Regis, the assembly of nobles and for the royal council. To the west of this building he built his own residence, the chambre de Roi. Finally, he built a chapel dedicated to Saint Nicholas.
Further additions were made by Louis VI, with the help of his friend and ally, Suger, the Abbot of the Basilica of Saint-Denis. Louis VI finished the chapel of Saint Nicholas, demolished the old tower or donjon in the center, and built a massive new donjon, the Grosse Tour, 11.7 meters wide at the base, with walls three meters thick. This tower existed until 1776.
His son, Louis VII (1120–1180) enlarged the royal residence and added an oratory; the lower floor of the oratory later became the chapel of the present Conciergerie. The entrance to the palace at this time was on the eastern side, on the Cour du Mai, where a grand ceremonial stairway was constructed. The western point of the island was transformed into a walled garden and orchard.
Philip II Augustus
Philip-Augustus (1180-1223) modernized the royal administration, and placed the royal archives, the treasury and courts within Palais de la Cité, and thereafter the city functioned, except for brief periods, as the capital of the kingdom. In 1187 he welcomed the English king, Richard the Lion-Heart, to his palace. The court records show the creation of a new official position, the Concierge, who was responsible for the administration of the lower and mid-level law courts within the palace. The palace later took its name from this position. Philip also greatly improved the air and aroma around the palace by having the muddy streets around it paved with stone. These were the first paved streets in Paris.
Louis IX and Sainte-Chapelle
The grandson of Philip Augustus, Louis IX (1214-1270), later known as Saint Louis, built a new shrine within the palace walls to demonstrate that he was not just king of France, but also the leader of the Christian world. Between 1242 and 1248, on the site of the old chapel, Louis built Sainte-Chapelle to hold the sacred relics he had acquired in 1238 from Baldwin II, Latin Emperor at Constantinople, including the reputed crown of thorns and wood from the cross of the Crucifixion of Christ. The chapel had two levels; the lower level for ordinary servants of the king, and the upper level for the king and royal family. The upper chapel was connected directly to the King's residence by a covered passage, called the Galerie Merciére. Only the King was allowed to touch the crown of thorns, which he took out each year on Good Friday.
Louis IX also created several new offices to manage the finances, administration and judicial system of his growing kingdom. This new bureaucracy, housed within the palace, eventually led to conflict between the royal government and the nobles, who had their own high court, the Parlement of Paris. To make room for his growing bureaucracy, and to create residences for the Chanoines or Canons, who managed the religious establishment, he had the southern wall of the palace demolished and replaced with housing. On the north side of the palace, just outside the walls to the Tour Bonbec, he built a new ceremonial hall, the Salle sur l'eau.
Philip IV
Philip IV (1285-1314) and his Chamberlain, Enguerrand de Marigny, reconstructed, enlarged and embellished the palace. On the north side, he expropriated land belonging to the dukes of Brittany and constructed new buildings for the Chambre des Enquetes, which supervised public administration; the Grand'Chambre, another high court; and two new towers, the Tour Cesar and the Tour d'Argent, as well as a gallery connecting the palace to the Tour Bombec. The royal offices took their names from the different chambers, or rooms, of the palace; the Chambre des Comptes, chamber of the accounts, was the treasury of the kingdom, and the courts were divided between the Chambre civile and the Chambre criminelle.
On the site of the old Salle de Roi he built a much larger and more richly decorated assembly hall, the Grand'Salle which had a double nave, each covered with a high arched wooden roof. A row of eight columns in the center of the hall supported the wooden framework of the roof. On each of the pillars, and on columns around the walls, were placed polychrome statues of the kings of France. In the center of the hall was an enormous table made of black marble from Germany, used for banquets, the taking of oaths, meetings of military high courts, and other official functions. A fragment of the table still exists, and is on display in the Conciergerie. The Grand'Salle was used for royal banquets, judicial proceedings, and theatrical performances.
At the west end of the island, where Place Dauphine is today, was a walled private garden, a bath house where the King could bathe in the water of the river, and a dock, from which the King could travel by boat to his other residences, the Louvre fortress on the right bank and the Tour de Nesle on the left bank.
The lower floor beneath the Grand'Salle contained the Salle des Gardes for the soldiers who protected the King, as well as the dining room for the household of the King, including officers, clerks, court officers and servants. High court officials had their own houses in the city, while lower officials and servants lived within the Palace. The household of the King at the time of Philip IV numbered about three hundred persons; counting the servants of the Queen and of the King's children, the number grew to about six hundred.
Philip made several further major changes to the palace. He reconstructed the south wall, and moved the wall on the east side to enlarge the ceremonial courtyard, The new wall, more that of a palace than a fortress, had two large gates and echauguettes, or small elevated posts for watchmen at the angles of the wall. He restored the Salle d'Eau, extended the logos de Roi, or royal residence further south, built a new building for Chambre des comptes, or royal treasury, and enlarged the garden. The works were almost complete when the King died in 1314. Philip's successors made a few further additions; John II (1319-1364) constructed new kitchens on two levels northwest of the Grand'Salle, and built a new square tower. Later, his son, Charles V (1338-1380) installed a clock in the tower, and it became known as the Tour de l'Horloge.
Late Middle Ages
The Hundred Years War between England and France changed the history and function of the palace. King John II was taken hostage by the English. In 1358 the leader of the Paris merchants, Etienne Marcel, led an uprising against royal authority. His soldiers invaded the palace, and, in the presence of the King's son, the future Charles V, they killed the King's counselors, Jean de Conflans and Robert de Clermont. The rebellion was abandoned and Marcel was killed, but when Charles V took the throne in 1364, he decided to move his residence a safe distance from the center of the city. He built a new residence, the Hôtel Saint-Pol, in the Marais quarter, close to the safety of the Bastille fortress; and later the Louvre Palace and then the Château de Vincennes became the royal residences.