A small stone island across the 1st and 4th arrondissements holds Notre-Dame, the law courts and the Conciergerie within one block, with Pont Neuf and Square du Vert-Galant at its western tip.
What Île de la Cité looks like
Notre-Dame de Paris stands at the island's eastern end, its parvis facing the Palais de Justice and the Prefecture de Police across a short run of streets. sits inside the Palais de Justice complex, its spire rising just above the courthouse roofline. The Conciergerie occupies the riverfront wing of the same complex, fronting the Quai de l'Horloge.
The civic buildings are cut stone, pale and grey, three to five storeys with steep slate roofs and few openings at street level. Notre-Dame and Sainte-Chapelle carry Gothic buttresses and traceried windows. The Palais de Justice and are plainer and heavier, their fronts running flat along the quay.
Boulevard du Palais and Rue de Lutèce cut straight through the middle of the island, laid out in the 1850s and 1860s. Eight bridges connect it to both banks. A single Metro station, Cité, sits at Place Louis Lépine. The square above it holds the city's oldest flower market, its wrought iron pavilions and glass roofs dating from the 1920s.
The Hotel Dieu forms the whole north side of the Notre-Dame parvis, rebuilt in the same pale stone between 1867 and 1878. At the western tip, narrows to a point below , its lawns and plane trees running down to a weeping willow at the water's edge. Pont Neuf has round masonry turrets partway across its arches, with clear views down both channels of the Seine.
Shot in Île de la Cité
Taken and The Bourne Identity both use the island's western tip for a tense outdoor meeting. Both scenes play out at street level, against the water and the bridge rather than against any of the island's monuments.
Taken, 2008
Square du Vert-Galant
Jean-Claude arranges to meet Bryan Mills at the park on the island's western tip. A van watches the meeting from outside a restaurant near the park's entrance. Street View
The Bourne Identity, 2002
Pont Neuf
Bourne sets up a meeting with Treadstone chief Conklin on the bridge. He watches the meeting from the roof of the Samaritaine building on the Quai du Louvre, across the river. Street View
What Île de la Cité can double for
Museumsinsel in Berlin, Germany
Museumsinsel is a similarly small island crowded with monumental stone institutions, five museums built in one block and reached over bridges from both banks of the Spree. The columned facades and stone steps give the same sense of an island given over entirely to grand public buildings. The museum buildings are later and more uniform in style than the mixed medieval and nineteenth century fronts here, so close framing on one facade reads more convincingly than a wide shot of the whole island. Try searching island of stone museums now.
Prati in Rome, Italy
The Palazzo di Giustizia in Prati is a similarly monumental stone courthouse standing directly against a river, with a heavily decorated facade and a formal quay in front of it. It gives the same sense of the law backing onto the water that the Palais de Justice and the Conciergerie have on the Seine. The decoration is heavier and more Baroque than the Palais de Justice's own front, so a tight shot on the ground floor and quay reads more convincingly than a wide view of the whole facade. Try searching courthouse on the river now.
Isola Tiberina in Rome, Italy
Isola Tiberina is a similarly small island in the Tiber, with a historic hospital and a church at one end much the way sits beside Notre-Dame here. Its quays and single bridges give the same close, waterbound feel for a hospital or convent scene. The island is far smaller and has no monumental civic quarter of its own, so it stands in for the religious and hospital corner only, not the courts side. Try searching island hospital church now.
