Île de la Cité
— — the island the bells came back to.
Not only on a wall.
“An island in the Seine, set between the Left and Right Banks. The Parisii lived here three centuries before Rome arrived, and the city kept building outward from this point. Notre-Dame at the eastern end, Sainte-Chapelle and the Conciergerie at the western. The Marché aux Fleurs still opens at Place Louis-Lépine through the week. The bells of Notre-Dame rang again in December of 2024, after five years of scaffolding and saws and the quiet of a closed nave. From the Pont Neuf, the prow of the island looks out at both banks at once.
Île de la Cité, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Île de la Cité is one of two natural islands in the Seine within central Paris, joined to the Right and Left Banks by nine bridges. The island sits in the 1st and 4th arrondissements. It is where the city itself began: the Parisii, a Celtic tribe, settled here in the 3rd century BC, and the Romans turned the encampment into Lutetia after 52 BC. Notre-Dame de Paris occupies the eastern third, the Sainte-Chapelle and the Conciergerie sit at the western, and the Pont Neuf, the city's oldest standing bridge, completed in 1607, anchors the prow.
The island carries three landmark stones, each from a different century. Sainte-Chapelle, finished in 1248 for Louis IX, holds about 1,113 individual scenes across fifteen stained-glass windows. It is the largest medieval glass programme to survive. Notre-Dame de Paris, begun in 1163 under Bishop Maurice de Sully, took roughly two centuries to complete, and its limestone vaults rose roughly 33 metres above the nave. The Conciergerie, the surviving medieval wing of the Palais de la Cité, held more than 2,700 prisoners during the Revolution, Marie Antoinette among them. The architects Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc led the 19th-century restoration that gave Notre-Dame its silhouette as the modern city knows it.
Three of the island's landmarks operate on separate ticket schedules. Sainte-Chapelle and the Conciergerie are run by the Centre des monuments nationaux, with a joint ticket available at a reduced rate. Notre-Dame de Paris reopened on 7 December 2024 after the April 2019 fire and five years of restoration; entry to the cathedral is free, with timed-entry reservations recommended at peak hours. The Marché aux Fleurs Reine Elizabeth II at Place Louis-Lépine is one of the oldest flower markets in Paris, open most days of the week. The closest Métro stops are Cité (Line 4) in the middle of the island and Saint-Michel-Notre-Dame (Line 4 with RER B and C) just across the Petit Pont.