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Strong and big and handsome

Posh Saint-Louis Island was once the Cows' Island. Animals walked in the grass. A Restaurant maintains the memory of barely 500 years go...

The city was in island....

This is a recent statue portraying Henry the IVth. He actually spent his life at war, on a horse and in a camp, fighting the Catholics. He eneded up himself catholic King of France, building modern Paris, and deserving this monument near his masterpiece - Place Dauphine. Hat off.

In the old times, going left one would have seen the City Walls and further left, where the dark building is, a Medieval Fortress. The military Louvre. To the right lots of smaller houses, and the Samaritaine was a device to get water from the Seine river for the fortress. Because this is all on the Seine front. Today the dark building is the elegant "colonnade" of today's Louvre palace. The houses in the middle are Haussmann's buildings, replacing small older houses in the late nineteenth century. And right is the glorious multi storey shop "la Samaritaine", built in the early twentieth century. All under the moonlight. Yet, you can still have some Medieval flavour in the small tower behind Haussmann's work. That is Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, the royal church, the tower is Roman.