An evening in prison

 rue de l'Hirondelle, 6th arr. on a Monday evening

In the voulted cave of the bar La Vénus Noire, where people like Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Oscar Wilde would have a drink at a time when the bar was known as the Caveau de Bolée, I found myself with a group of mainly women listening to a young, enthusiastic woman talking about the old Parisian prisons.

La Vénus Noire started out as a school in the13th century (Collège d'Autan), but was also used as a prison and known as the Cachots de Collège d'Autan. We were sitting in the intimacy of the cave where prisoners had engraved a pig's head on one of the pillars, among other things. link

Sylvanie raced us through Paris before and after the revolution (1789), Marie-Antoinette emprisoned in the Conciergerie prison, the legend of The Iron Mask, the filming of Interview with the Vampire in rue de l'Hirondelle (where La Vénus Noire is located), Marquis de Sadé and his writings in La Bastille prison, Voltaire who was also a prisoner in La Bastille, the escape of Latude and the homemade ladder he used for that purpose (which can now be seen in the Carnavalet Museum), the remains of La Bastille today link, the origin of the word "morgue" (mortuary in English) which means "face" in old French because prisoners were taken there to be clearly identified for later use (this was before the finger prints and DNA) and much, much more......