Notre-Dame de Paris · Chapter
II: The Place de Grève explained
This chapter describes the Place de Grève in 15th-century Paris, focusing on its architecture, history, and the grim presence of the gibbet and pillory.
What happens
This chapter describes the Place de Grève in 15th-century Paris, focusing on its architecture, history, and the grim presence of the gibbet and pillory. It contrasts the medieval Gothic square with its modern remnants, highlighting the evolution of justice and the death penalty.
Themes in this chapter
Architecture and Preservation
The chapter details the architectural features of the Place de Grève, including the Gothic turret and the Pillared House, and laments the loss of medieval structures to modern development.
Social Injustice and Class
The description of the permanent gibbet and pillory highlights the brutal public punishment system and the class-based nature of justice in feudal society.
Key passages
“It is consoling today, after having lost successively all the pieces of its armor, its luxury of torment, its penalty of imagination and fancy, its torture for which it reconstructed every five years a leather bed at the Grand Châtelet, that ancient suzerain of feudal society almost expunged from our laws and our cities, hunted from code to code, chased from place to place, has no longer, in our immense Paris, any more than a dishonored corner of the Grève—than a miserable guillotine, furtive, uneasy, shameful, which seems always afraid of being caught in the act, so quickly does it disappear after having dealt its blow.”
It is comforting that the once elaborate and widespread apparatus of torture and execution in Paris has been reduced to a single, shameful guillotine in the Grève, which seems to hide after each use.
Reflects on the decline of public torture and the modern guillotine's furtive nature.
“The Grève had then that sinister aspect which it preserves today from the execrable ideas which it awakens, and from the sombre town hall of Dominique Bocador, which has replaced the Pillared House.”
The Grève has always had a grim appearance, which it still retains due to the dark thoughts it inspires and the replacement of the old Pillared House with Bocador's gloomy town hall.
Describes the enduring sinister character of the square.