Square Jean XXIII

Square Jean XXIII sits directly behind the apse of Notre-Dame Cathedral. Before it was a tranquil garden, this precise patch of ground held the opulent palace of the archbishopric. Built in sixteen ninety-seven, the palace served as the residence for Paris’s senior clergy for over a century. That structure met a violent end on February fourteenth, eighteen thirty-one, when a mob stormed and looted the building during a period of intense civil unrest, leaving it in ruins. The site was subsequently cleared and transformed into what became the first public district garden in Paris, opening to the public in eighteen forty-three.