At first glance, it's just a door. Yet the history of this door, which opened the way to the French monarchs for two centuries, borders on the miraculous. Here we look back at its adventures as a preview of what the forthcoming reopening of the Carnavalet museum, dedicated to the history of Paris, has in store for us.
At the height of the Fronde, despite the resistance by Paris's archers and the governor's guards, the rioters assembled at the Place de Grève attacked the Hôtel de Ville (city hall) and reduced it to ashes. This was on July 4, 1652. The palace, built a century earlier by King Francis I and the Italian architect Boccador, was ravaged by the fire, which destroyed the main entrance made of wood. To repair the damage, the following year the carpenter Guillaume Grouart was commissioned to make a new door, with…
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