Arrondissement 4
Numbers 2-4
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
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