Prison de l'Abbaye

The final building was built by Christophe Gamard in 1631 and made up of three floors, flanked by two turrets (or more exactly, échauguettes).

It was the scene of a portion of the September Massacres, one of the bloodiest episodes of the French Revolution.

It occupied part of the current site of Boulevard Saint-Germain in the SE corner of the enclosure of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

The abbey dated to the earliest era of Paris, when Childebert I (on the site of a temple to Isis or Ceres, according to legend) founded a monastery dedicated to the Holy Cross and to St Vincent of Saragossa, which later took the name of its administering bishop Germain of Paris.

Its basilica became known as "Saint-Denis of the Merovingians", since it contained the tombs of Childebert I and others of the dynasty.

The Prison de l’Abbaye in 1831
Prison de l'Abbaye where between 2 and 4 September 1792 160-220 people, including a group of twenty-two priests, were killed in three days. It was located between Rue de Bussi and Rue du Four (E40), with the entrance on Rue Sainte-Marguerite, today Boulevard Saint-Germain .