Pont au Change

Stand still for a moment on the pale stone of this bridge. Feel the slight rise of the roadway under your feet as it arches over the Seine. Below you, the river runs green-grey and steady, and the tourist boats slide past with a low hum of engines and voices. Behind you, dark towers with pointed roofs rise from the island. Ahead, the traffic of the Right Bank moves around a wide square. You are standing on one of the oldest river crossings in Paris, even if the stones themselves are much younger.

This is the Pont au Change. It links the Île de la Cité, the island where Paris began, to the Right Bank at the Place du Châtelet. The name means, quite simply, the Bridge of Exchange. And that name comes from money. In the Middle Ages, money changers and goldsmiths kept their shops on an earlier bridge at roughly this spot. Travellers and merchants arrived from across Europe with coins of many kinds. Here, they could trade them for local currency.

Picture that earlier bridge for a moment. It did not look like the open roadway you see today. Like several Paris bridges of that era, it was lined with houses and shops. Buildings stood shoulder to shoulder along both sides, so a person crossing might barely see the water at all. It felt more like a narrow street than a bridge. People lived, worked, cooked and slept here, directly above the river.

That way of building came with real dangers. Wooden houses, crowded together over moving water, were exposed to fire and to floods. Paris bridges collapsed or burned more than once over the centuries. After one destructive fire in the early seventeenth century, a new stone bridge was built here, still carrying houses. Then, in the late eighteenth century, the authorities ordered the houses on the Paris bridges to be cleared away. For the first time in generations, people crossing here could look out at the open river.

The bridge under your feet today belongs to the middle of the nineteenth century. It was built in the reign of Napoleon the Third, the nephew of the famous Napoleon. This was the era when the city was being transformed with wide boulevards and long, straight lines of sight. The new bridge was designed to line up with that modern street plan. It has three broad stone arches, low and calm, built to let river traffic pass easily beneath.

Here is a detail many visitors walk straight past. Look over the side of the bridge, at the stonework above the arches. You will see a large letter N, carved inside a laurel wreath. That N stands for Napoleon the Third. Emperors liked to leave their initial on the things they built, and this is his signature on the bridge. The empire itself ended in 1870, but the letters stayed in the stone.

Now turn toward the island. The long building with the round towers and conical roofs is the Conciergerie. It was once part of the medieval royal palace, when French kings lived on this island. Later, it became a prison. During the French Revolution, many prisoners waited here before facing trial and execution. Among them was Queen Marie Antoinette. From this bridge, you see the river front of that building almost exactly as Parisians have seen it for centuries.

At the corner nearest the bridge stands a square tower with a large, decorated clock on its side. This is the Clock Tower of the old palace. A clock has been kept here since the fourteenth century, and it is often described as the first public clock in Paris. Think about what that meant. Before public clocks, most people told time by church bells and the sun. Here, on the corner of the royal palace, time itself became something the whole street could see.

This bridge also has a dark place in literature. In Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables, the police inspector Javert reaches the end of his long hunt for Jean Valjean. Unable to reconcile his duty with the mercy he has been shown, he throws himself into the Seine. Hugo places that scene on this stretch of river, between the Pont au Change and the Pont Notre-Dame, the next bridge upstream. Readers who know the book often stop here and look down at the water a little longer.

Now face the Right Bank. The open square in front of you is the Place du Châtelet. Its name recalls the Grand Châtelet, a medieval fortress that once guarded the approach to this bridge. It was a stronghold, a court and a prison, and it was demolished in the early nineteenth century. In the centre of the square today you will see a tall column on a fountain, topped by a golden figure of Victory. Two large theatres face each other across the square.

It helps to understand why this crossing mattered so much. For most of its history, Paris was a city divided by the river. The island sat in the middle like a stepping stone. To travel north or south, you crossed onto the island by one bridge and off it by another. This bridge carried the main route from the island to the Right Bank, where trade and markets grew. So for centuries, a great deal of the city's daily life passed over this exact spot.

Today, the bridge is a working road as much as a monument. Buses, cars and bicycles pass in a steady flow. People hurry to the law courts on the island or to the metro station at Châtelet, one of the busiest in the city. That is part of its character. It was always a place of movement and exchange, not of quiet contemplation. The money changers are gone, but the crossing is still busy, still useful, still part of ordinary Paris life.

If you have time, walk to the middle of the bridge and look both ways along the river. Downstream, you can follow the water toward the Pont Neuf and the western tip of the island. Upstream, the river curves toward the Pont Notre-Dame and, beyond it, the cathedral district. The light changes quickly here. In the morning, the stone of the Conciergerie looks cool and grey. Late in the day, it turns warmer, and the towers throw long shadows across the water.

Before you move on, rest your hand on the stone parapet for a moment. Under you are the arches of an emperor, built on a site where goldsmiths once counted coins in rooms above the river. Ahead are the theatres and the traffic of modern Paris. Behind you is the island where the city began. As you walk off the bridge, listen for the sound of the river under the arches. It is the one part of this place that has never changed.