Water Problems In Paris In The 13th Century

Problems in Paris

Paris is now a beautiful city in France that attracts many tourists, but it wasn't always like that. Before Paris was ridden with problems. Paris had problems both inside and outside the city, with its own people, with other people, and with their resources as well. Paris had problems with other nations trying to invade Paris, their water supply, and with overcrowding within the city.

Paris was invaded by both the Franks and the Vikings, but they soon came up with a solution. The king of France during that time, King Philippe August, had decided to build a wall around Paris to protect it. The wall was to be 32ft tall and 8ft wide with a space between an outer wall and an inner wall. If there was any trash, it was to be thrown

In the 13th century, Paris' main water supply was the Seine river, but in the summer the Seine river would dry up, leaving Paris with a water problem. To fix this, engineering monks built aqueducts under the city of Paris. These aqueducts would transfer clean spring to fountains in the center of Paris. Citizens would them go get their allowed 2 pints of water per day and take it home to use or drink. 500 years later there was another drought. With only 2 pints a day, people weren't getting the necessary amount of water to sustain themselves. Then an engineer named Dominic Gerard had the idea to build a canal connecting the Seine with a smaller river. This smaller river was 60 miles outside of Paris and would help so that the Seine river wouldn't dry up during the summer. After a little bit, another river was added into the canal. With the water having to run uphill they built a pumping system that would get the water flowing. With that they fixed the problem of drought.

Paris was overcrowded. The streets were too small and dirty as well. So Napoleon III hired Eugene Houssman to fix this. Napoleon wanted him to modernize Paris. Eugene completely tore down the center of Paris and cleaned up the sludge. Eugene laid down wide boulevards in a wheel shape to help with crowd control and made all of the buildings the same height at 5 stories