The Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation, a memorial to the 200,000 people deported from Vichy France to Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War, is located at the eastern end of the island.

[4] An academic debate about the original location of Lutetia began in 2006, following the excavation in 1994–2005 of a large Gallic necropolis, with residences and temples, at Nanterre, along the Seine in the Paris suburbs.

They say that the absence of traces of pre-Roman settlement discovered so far on Île de la Cité is due primarily to the continuous building and rebuilding on the island over the centuries.

In 451, during the late Roman Empire, when the Huns occupied the left bank, Saint Genevieve led the defence of the city from the island.

[6] The Roman Emperor Julian, residing in Gaul from 355 to 361, described "a small island lying in the river; a wall entirely surrounds it, and wooden bridges lead to it on both sides.

It was located near the present flower market and Metro station, and was a large rectangular building 70 by 35 meters in size, with a central nave and two collateral aisles.

In 1160, the bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully, began construction of a cathedral in the new Gothic style, to match the magnificence of the palace.

The crowding of the island, and the resulting problems of narrow streets jammed with traffic, pollution, and foul smells, caused the Kings of France to search for a new residence.

The Ilot des Juifs had been the site of the burning at the stake of Jacques de Molay, the leader of the Knights Templar, in 1314, as the island was just below the towers of the Royal Palace.

[12] Notre-Dame de Paris also suffered during the French Revolution; it was closed and then turned into a Temple of Reason; much of the sculpture – particularly in the portals on the west front – was defaced or destroyed.

In the final days of the Commune, the Communards set fire to the Palace of Justice, and attempted to burn down Notre-Dame de Paris.

The walls of the crypt are inscribed with the names of concentration camps and with quotations by writers; the corridor is lined with two hundred thousand small glass crystals, each representing a victim of the deportations.

The area in front of the church was packed with narrow houses and streets until Paris was rebuilt in a more expansive style by Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann in the mid-19th century.

[21] Excavations for a car park under the square in 1965 uncovered vestiges of the original Gallo-Roman walls of the city and the Roman baths, dating to the 4th century.

[21] A plaque on the parvis thirty meters in front of the central portal marks the point from which distances by road to other cities in France are measured.

The metro station is unusually deep — twenty metres (66 ft) underground — because the tunnel carrying the trains must pass underneath the River Seine.

The building was constructed between 1860 and 1865 in the extremely ornate Louis XIII style – like the Palais Garnier opera house, built at about the same time.

[24] The Hôtel-Dieu, located between the Parvis of Notre-Dame on the south and the Quai de la Corse on the north, is the oldest hospital in Paris.

[15] Historical buildings close to the same site included the Hospice of Found Children, built in 1670, where new-born babies could be abandoned without explanation at any hour of the day or night.

[25] Several residences remain from this period; the house at 24 rue Chanoinesse, from about 1512, has large doors leading to an interior courtyard and dormer windows jutting up from the roof.

One celebrated inhabitant of the neighborhood was the playwright Jean Racine, who lived on the second floor in the courtyard of the house at 7 rue des Ursines between 1672 and 1677.

With the departure of the kings of France to the Louvre and then to Versailles, the palace gradually was transformed into the judicial centre of the Kingdom, containing the courts, administrative offices and a prison.

Four stairways originally reached upward to the grand ceremonial hall on the first floor, where the Parliament met and court festivities were held.

[35] The Quai des Orfèvres, "The Quay of the Goldmsiths and Silversmiths", is on the southwestern side of the island, alongside the Palace of Justice and the Place Dauphine.

[36] Its current name dates from the 17th and 18th centuries, when many celebrated Paris jewellers had their shops here; including Boehmer and Bassenge - who made a famous necklace for Marie-Antoinette - and Georg Friedrich Strass, who invented both the rhinestone and the synthetic diamond.

It is named for Achille de Harlay, the first president of the Parlement of Paris in the early 17th century; his house stood in that location until it was demolished for the enlargement of the Palace of Justice.

Its highly theatrical facade was designed by Joseph-Louis Duc, whose other famous Paris work is the July Column in the Place de la Bastille.

It features marble classical columns, pediments and bas-reliefs; there are sculpted lions on the grand stairways, eagles on the roof and statues of famous jurists in togas along the facade.

[38] The houses were built of brick, with limestone quoins supported on arcaded stone ground floors and capped by steep slate roofs with dormers - similar to the façades of Place des Vosges.

One was at the downstream end, entering through a kind of gateway centred on paired pavilions facing the equestrian statue of Henry IV on the far side of the Pont Neuf.