Paris's Grand Plans to Make a Tourist Hotspot More Appealing to Locals

Given its incredible history, the Île de la Cité really should be more enticing than it is. An island in the heart of Paris that splits the river Seine like an elaborate galleon blown upstream, it has been inhabited for over 2,000 years. It houses two of Europe’s most beautiful churches—Notre Dame Cathedral and the Sainte Chapelle—one of the world’s best preserved renaissance bridges, and the former prison of Marie Antoinette. Despite this sheer tonnage of beauty and memory, the island still retains a perplexingly arid atmosphere, with little street life beyond the tourists in transit.

That could now be set to change. As the final gesture of his term, France’s President François Hollande has made a revamp of the Île de la Cité one of his key legacy projects. The plan, by architect Dominique Perrault, is detailed in an exhibition that opened at the Conciergerie last week. Still at the conceptual stage, it would see the island effectively redesigned to make it more vibrant and pedestrian friendly, giving visitors more things to see there, and, above all, providing a host of new facilities that would make the place more attractive to ordinary Parisians.