Palais de la Cité

The Conciergerie (French pronunciation: ​[kɔ̃sjɛʁʒəʁi]) is a former courthouse and prison in Paris, France, located on the west of the Île de la Cité, below the Palais de Justice. It was originally part of the former royal palace, the Palais de la Cité, which also included the Sainte-Chapelle. Two large medieval halls remain from the royal palace. During the French Revolution, 2,780 prisoners, including Marie-Antoinette, were imprisoned, tried and sentenced at the Conciergerie, then sent to different sites to be executed by the guillotine. It is now a national monument and museum.

The Court of Appeal of Paris (French: Cour d'appel de Paris) is the largest appeals court in France in terms of the number of cases brought before it. Its jurisdiction covers the departments of Paris, Essonne, Yonne, Seine-et-Marne, Seine-Saint-Denis, and the Val de Marne.The Court is housed in the Palais de Justice of Paris. Jacques Degrandi has been the president of the Court since 2010.

The Palais de Justice (French pronunciation: ​[palɛ də ʒystis]; '"Palace of Justice"), is a judicial center and courthouse in Paris, located on the Île de la Cité. It contains the Court of Appeal of Paris, the busiest appellate court in France, and France's highest court for ordinary cases, the Court of Cassation. It formerly housed the Tribunal de grande instance de Paris which was relocated in 2018 to a new high-rise building in Paris's Batignolles neighborhood. The Palais de Justice occupies a large part of the medieval Palais de la Cité, the former royal palace of the Kings of France, which also includes Sainte Chapelle, the royal chapel, and the Conciergerie, a notorious former prison, which operated from 1380 to 1914. It is located in close proximity to the Tribunal of Commerce, the Prefecture of Police of Paris, and the offices of the Paris Bar Association.

The Théâtre de la Cité-Variétés, also known simply as the Théâtre de la Cité, was an entertainment venue now demolished, located in the former rue Saint-Barthélemy, now the Boulevard du Palais, on the Île de la Cité in the modern 4th arrondissement of Paris. The theatre had a capacity of 1,800–2,000 spectators.

The Pont au Change is a bridge over the Seine River in Paris, France. The bridge is located at the border between the first and fourth arrondissements. It connects the Île de la Cité from the Palais de Justice and the Conciergerie, to the Right Bank, at the Place du Châtelet.

The Tribunal judiciaire de Paris (abbreviated TJ; in English: Judicial Court of Paris), located at the Judicial Campus of Paris in Batignolles, is the largest court in France by caseload. It replaced the capital's former Tribunal de grande instance (Court of major instance) and Tribunal d'instance (court of petty instance) under an amalgamation of jurisdictions that came into effect on January 1, 2020.

The Sainte-Chapelle (French: [sɛ̃t ʃapɛl]; English: Holy Chapel) is a royal chapel in the Gothic style, within the medieval Palais de la Cité, the residence of the Kings of France until the 14th century, on the Île de la Cité in the River Seine in Paris, France. Construction began sometime after 1238 and the chapel was consecrated on 26 April 1248. The Sainte-Chapelle is considered among the highest achievements of the Rayonnant period of Gothic architecture. It was commissioned by King Louis IX of France to house his collection of Passion relics, including Christ's Crown of Thorns – one of the most important relics in medieval Christendom, later hosted in the nearby Notre-Dame Cathedral until the 2019 fire, which it survived.Along with the Conciergerie, the Sainte-Chapelle is one of the earliest surviving buildings of the Capetian royal palace on the Île de la Cité. Although damaged during the French Revolution and restored in the 19th century, it has one of the most extensive 13th-century stained glass collections anywhere in the world. The Sainte-Chapelle is no longer a church. It was secularised after the French Revolution, and is now operated by the French Centre of National Monuments, along with the nearby Conciergerie, the other remaining vestige of the original palace.

In France, the tribunal de commerce (plural tribunaux de commerce, literally "commercial courts") are the oldest courts in the French judicial organization. They were created at the end of the Middle Ages. The commercial court has jurisdiction over commercial cases: disputes between merchants, disputes over commercial acts, controversies involving commercial corporations, and bankruptcy proceedings. The judges of the commercial courts are not career judges but elected traders. They are elected for terms of two or four years by an electoral college made up of current and former judges of the commercial courts and traders’ delegates (délégués consulaires), who are themselves traders elected in the area within the jurisdiction of the court. There are 134 commercial courts in France.

Cité (French: [site] (listen)) is a metro station on Line 4 of the Paris Métro in the 4th arrondissement of Paris.

The Court of Cassation (French: Cour de cassation [kuʁ də ka.sa.sjɔ̃]) is one of the four courts of last resort in France. It has jurisdiction over all civil and criminal matters triable in the judicial system, and is the supreme court of appeal in these cases. It has jurisdiction to review the law, and to certify questions of law, to determine miscarriages of justice. The Court is located in the Palace of Justice in Paris. The Court does not have jurisdiction over cases involving claims against administrators or public bodies, which fall within the jurisdiction of administrative courts, for which the Council of State acts as the supreme court of appeal; nor over cases involving constitutional issues, which fall within the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Council; nor over cases involving disputes about which of these courts has jurisdiction, which are heard by the Jurisdictional Disputes Tribunal. Collectively, these four courts form the topmost tier of the French court system. The Court was established in 1790 under the name Tribunal de cassation during the French Revolution, and its original purpose was to act as a court of error with revisory jurisdiction over lower provincial prerogative courts (Parlements). However, much about the Court continues the earlier Paris Parlement. The Court is the seat of the Network of the Presidents of the Supreme Judicial Courts of the European Union.

The Théâtre du Châtelet (French pronunciation: ​[teɑtʁ dy ʃɑtlɛ]) is a theatre and opera house, located in the place du Châtelet in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. One of two theatres (the other being the Théâtre de la Ville) built on the site of a châtelet, a small castle or fortress, it was designed by Gabriel Davioud at the request of Baron Haussmann between 1860 and 1862. Originally named the Théâtre Impérial du Châtelet, it has undergone remodeling and name changes over the years. Currently it seats 2,500 people.

The Grand Châtelet was a stronghold in Ancien Régime Paris, on the right bank of the Seine, on the site of what is now the Place du Châtelet; it contained a court and police headquarters and a number of prisons. The original building on the site may have been a wooden tower constructed by Charles the Bald in 870 to defend the then new Grand-Pont bridge (now replaced by the Pont au Change), but it is known that Louis VI built a stronger structure in stone, a châtelet ('small castle'), in 1130; it was called the Grand Châtelet in contrast to the Petit Châtelet built around the same time at the end of the Petit Pont, on the south bank of the Seine. It lost its defensive purpose in 1190 when Philip Augustus built a rampart around the perimeter of the city; from then on it served as the headquarters of the prévôt de Paris, the official "charged with protection of royal rights, oversight of royal administration, and execution of royal justice" in late medieval Paris. The court of the Châtelet was always subordinate to the Parlement de Paris, but it had extensive criminal and civil jurisdiction, and treason cases were frequently tried there. For centuries, the magistrates of the Châtelet clashed with those of the Hôtel de Ville over jurisdiction. The Châtelet was rebuilt by Charles V, but by 1460 it had fallen into such disrepair that the sittings of the court were held at the Louvre, not returning until 1506; in 1657 the court was once again forced to move temporarily, this time to the convent of the Grands Augustins on the Rue Dauphine. In 1684 the structure was almost completely rebuilt by Louis XIV, taking on the form that it had until it was demolished after the Revolution. "The roadway which passed under the Chatelet (in effect the continuation of the Rue Saint-Denis) set apart the municipal prison on the eastern side of the structure from the various magisterial chambers to the west." Under the western side lay the city morgue; the prisons on the eastern side increased in number from nine to twenty over the years, ranging from dormitories where prisoners lived "à la pistole," that is with beds, to those called "au secret," ranging from a huge hall with straw mats to subterranean dungeons. Like all edifices in the Old Regime connected with the administration of justice, the Chatelet enjoyed a very sinister reputation, even worse than the storied Bastille. Relatively few Parisians of common stock were ever able to claim the dubious distinction that a relative or friend languished in the dungeons of the Bastille; many more could make the claim for the dank chambers of the Châtelet, inherently far more fearsome than the dry and relatively comfortable prison a mile to the east. Among the famous prisoners who spent time in the Châtelet were Clément Marot, who composed his Enfer there; the famous highwayman Cartouche; the poisoner Antoine-François Desrues (1744-1777); and the marquis de Favras. The area around the Châtelet was physically unpleasant as well, due to the smell of drying blood from nearby slaughterhouses and "the effluent of the great sewers that oozed into the Seine between the Pont Notre-Dame and the Pont-au-Change." In 1790, with the abolition of the office of prévôt de Paris, the Châtelet lost its function, and as part of the general refurbishment of the area it was demolished between 1802 and 1810 and the Place du Châtelet created at the north end of the bridge.