The Conciergerie preserves part of the medieval Palais de la Cité, once the residence and seat of French royal power. Later converted into a prison, it became closely associated with the Revolutionary Tribunal and the confinement of Marie-Antoinette.
Quick facts
The Conciergerie is part of the medieval Palais de la Cité.
It became a prison for the Parliament of Paris toward the end of the fourteenth century.
Marie-Antoinette was its most famous Revolutionary-era prisoner.
Get directions to Conciergerie. Confirm the visitor entrance and current access with the venue before travelling.
Audio guide
Listen to this place’s guide.
Guide
The Conciergerie brings two very different kinds of power into the same rooms. Its vaulted medieval halls belonged to the royal palace; later, people were held here while awaiting the Revolutionary Tribunal. Neither story cancels the other. The building’s meaning lies in how its rooms were repurposed—and in how later generations reshaped their memory.
Continue exploring
Discover the full story
Keep reading with a travel pass and explore every full guide and tour.
UpgradeMore places in Paris
Sainte-Chapelle
Built for Louis IX inside the former Palais de la Cité, Sainte-Chapelle was a royal sanctuary for Passion relics. Its two stacked chapels culminate in an upper room of stained glass, where biblical history, royal imagery and sacred light meet.
Pont Neuf
Pont Neuf is paradoxically the oldest surviving bridge in Paris. Its late sixteenth-century design introduced stone construction without houses on the bridge, leaving it open as a public route and viewpoint over the Seine.
59 Rivoli
59 Rivoli is a working artist collective and public art space in a 19th-century Rue de Rivoli building. Born from a 1999 occupation of a vacant property, it now combines artist studios, a gallery and public programming under an association-city partnership.
Notre-Dame Cathedral
Notre-Dame is a living Gothic cathedral on the Île de la Cité, where Paris once concentrated its religious life and river crossings. Its medieval fabric, nineteenth-century restoration, 2019 fire and continuing conservation record how the city repeatedly rebuilds its most visible landmark.
Musée de Cluny
The Musée de Cluny joins a late-medieval abbots’ residence with the remains of Roman baths. Its unusual juxtaposition makes the site itself the exhibit: successive buildings rose over ancient structures, preserving fragments of Paris across nearly two millennia.
Centre Pompidou
Centre Pompidou brings modern art, public reading, design, and music research together in a landmark cultural complex in Paris’s Beaubourg district. Its exposed structure made a flexible cultural institution visible to the city; the historic building is closed for renovation until its planned 2030 r