Couvent des Cordelières

The tall, solitary brick tower rising above the modern streetscape in the thirteenth arrondissement belonged to the church of a Franciscan convent founded in the thirteenth century. Queen Marguerite of Provence established this house for the Poor Clares, known as the Cordelières because of the knotted ropes they wore as belts. During the French Revolution, the state seized the property, sold the buildings, and eventually dismantled the church, leaving only this fragment of a bell tower to mark the site of their enclosure.