Ile Saint-Louis

The island was two uninhabited pastures, the Ile aux Vaches and the Ile Notre-Dame, until a developer joined them and laid out a grid of streets in the 1610s, building it out over about forty years in a single architectural moment. Because it was completed as one project and never rebuilt, it remains a coherent seventeenth-century quarter: a straight central street, stone hotels particuliers with tall windows, quays on all sides and no metro station on the island itself. Berthillon has made ice cream here since 1954 and the queue is part of the street. Four bridges and a footbridge to the Ile de la Cite connect it.

History

The island, first called Île Notre-Dame and owned by the chapter of Notre-Dame, was used for grazing cattle, fishing, drying laundry and the occasional duel, and in 1360 a canal cut it in two to bring it inside the new wall of Charles V; the smaller eastern part became the Île aux Vaches. Henry IV meant to develop it, but his assassination in 1610 delayed the plan, and from 1616 the developer Christophe Marie, working for the regent Marie de' Medici, filled the canal, built stone quays all round and laid out plots; within fifty years the island was fully built, its quays taken by magistrates and financiers and its interior by merchants and artisans. The Pont Marie is named after him, the Pont Louis XIII, whose first stone the young king laid, was finished only in 1635, the island took the name Saint-Louis in 1725, and in the Revolution it was briefly the Île de la Fraternité (Wikipedia, Île Saint-Louis).

What's there

• The single-period streets - a whole quarter built in one seventeenth-century push.
• The quays - stone embankments on all four sides with river views.
• Berthillon - the ice cream maker on rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile.
• The hotels particuliers - private mansions along the quays.

When to go

Year-round; evenings on the quays are the quietest and best. Berthillon closes for August and on some weekdays, which surprises visitors who come for it.

Before you go

The island is small and walked in an hour. It is expensive and largely residential, with limited to actually do. Berthillon's main shop closes seasonally though partner cafes sell the ice cream.

Nearby

The Ile de la Cite lies west; the Marais is north.