Rue de Roi de Sicile

Arrondissement 4

Numbers 2-4

The only physical remains of the Prison de la Force in the rue de Roi de Sicile. Many aristocrats were placed before their executions in September 1792. Later it was a holding prison for opposition figures on short sentences such as Pierre-Jean Béranger and Blanqui .

In 1780 the huge 16th century town house at numbers 2-4 that had once belonged to the Duc de La Force was bought by Louis XVI and rebuilt as a modern prison in two sections, one for men and the other for women. Under the French Revolution it became a holding prison, and from 1815 to 1828 a prison used mainly for prostitutes.

In 1828-29 Pierre Jean de Béranger, the Georges Brassens of his day, a highly popular song-writer critical of Charles X was jailed there.  In 1831 this was where Blanqui entered his first prison.

Falling down and dirty and disease-ridden the prison was demolished in 1845, with just one wall still surviving in the rue Mahler, where it now joins the Historical Library of the city of Paris.

PLACES