Rue Corneille

The Rue Corneille is a narrow, stone-paved passage running alongside the northern wall of the Palais des Papes. It takes its name from the seventeenth-century playwright Pierre Corneille, though he never lived here. In the fourteen hundreds, this path served as a vital, high-security corridor for the papal guards. They patrolled these shadows to prevent unauthorized access to the palace treasury, which held the immense wealth of the Avignon papacy. One night in fourteen thirty-seven, a guard actually caught an intruder scaling the wall.