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The display of the head - the executioner held it up while he circled the scaffold twice.The 1st Arrondissement (Ier Arrondissement in French) is one of the smallest and least-populated of the twenty arrondissements of Paris but boasts some of the most ancient and finest monuments. The First is more or less the heart of the city encompassing Notre Dame on Île de la Cité and the Louvre on the Right Bank. Île de la Cité was formerly a Roman city called Lutetia (52 BC).

The First also takes in a good part of the elegant Rue de Rivoli which saw a lot of the street-fighting during the Liberation of Paris from the Germans in 1944. Place de Concorde has a small rememberance wall to some of the soldiers and resistance fighters who fell during this time. Concorde is also where Louis XVI - the last French king - lost his head to the guillotine in 1793. Here's a contemporary account of it -

I doubt not that the King's death will be described in different ways, as the partisan spirit dictates, and that garbled versions of this great event will appear in the newspapers and be noised abroad in such a manner as to distort the truth. As an eyewitness, who has always been far removed from the prejudice of parties, and who is but too well acquainted with the worthlessness of the aura popularis, I am going to give you a faithful account of what happened. I greatly regret that I was obliged to attend the execution bearing arms with the other citizens of the section and I write to you now with my heart filled with grief and my whole being stunned by the shock of this dreadful experience.

Louis, who, fortified by the principles of religion, seemed completely resigned to meet death, left his prison in the Temple about nine in the morning and was taken to the place of execution in the mayor's carriage with his confessor and two gendarmes, the curtains being drawn.

When he arrived at his destination he looked at the scaffold without flinching. The executioner at once proceeded to perform the customary rite by cutting off the King's hair which he put in his pocket. Louis then walked up onto the scaffold. The air was filled with the roll of numerous drums, seemingly intended to prevent the people from demanding grace. The drumbeats were hushed for a moment by a gesture from Louis himself, but at a signal from the adjutant of the General of the National Guard, they recommenced with such force that Louis's voice was drowned and it was only possible to catch a few stray words like "I forgive my enemies." At the same time he took a few steps round the fatal plank to which he was drawn by a feeling of horror natural to any man on the brink of death or, maybe, he conceived that the people might appeal for grace, for what man does not cling to hope even in his last moments?

The adjutant ordered the executioner to do his duty and in a trice Louis was fastened onto the deadly plank of the machine they call the guillotine and his head was cut off so quickly that he could hardly have suffered. This at least is a merit belonging to the murderous instrument which bears the name of the doctor who invented it. The executioner immediately lifted the head from the sack into which it fell automatically and displayed it to the people.

As soon as the execution had taken place, the expression on the faces of many spectators changed and, from having worn an air of somber consternation, they shifted to another mood and fell to crying, "Vive la Nation!" At least one can say this of the cavalry who witnessed the execution and who waved their helmets on the point of their sabers.

Some of the citizens followed suit, but a great number withdrew, their spirits racked with pain, to shed tears in the bosom of their families.

As decapitation could not be performed without spilling blood on the scaffold many persons hurried to the spot to dip the end of their handkerchief or a piece of paper in it, to have a reminder of this memorable event, for one need not have recourse to odious interpretations of such actions.

The body was carried to the cemetery of Ste. Marguerite, after the Commissioners of the Municipality, the Security Department and the Criminal Court had drawn up the minutes.

His son, the former Dauphin, in an access of childish simplicity, which attracted much sympathy, had in his last conversation with his father urgently begged to be allowed to go with him to the scaffold to ask the people to pardon him.

BTW the death penalty was abolished thirty years ago but there is still a guillotine in storage, ready for use. The constitution of the Fifth Republic allows the guillotine to be used in times of crisis or in times of war. All it would take to re-establish the death penalty is a Presidential Decree.

Just up the road towards the Louvre you'll find Place Vendome and the Ritz Hotel where Diana and Dodi set off in the Mercedes on their fateful sprint from the paparazzi. Walk through the Tuileries Gardens and you come to two of the nicest bridges crossing the Seine. The first is a footbridge - Ponts des Arts - and the second, Pont Neuf (400 year old New Bridge), connects Île de la Cité with the Right and Left Banks.

16th C. Paris MapParis is made up of 20 arrondissement (districts) that spiral out from the centre of the city like a seashell. Those of us that live in this great city describe where we live by giving the arrondissement and very often the Metro stop and line. If you want to know what arrondissement you're in when you come to Paris you just glance up at the street sign and it will tell you.

Some arrondissements can be described as posh or working-class but generally the arrondissements are a mix of wealthy and not-so-wealthy areas. In fact in some arrondissements one side of the street can be classy and the other not so. The 17th for instance is downright ritzy around Parc Monceau but it encompasses Porte de Clichy and the edge of the Pigalle districts which are not so nice.

Each arrondissement is like a village with its own Town Hall (Marie), Mayor, police station and central post office. All Paris addresses include the arrondissement and the postcode. 75 is the Paris postcode followed by the arrondissement number. So my office in the 16th is postcode 75016.

I'm building a Paris Arrondissement Map here with Google Maps help. Just gotta figure out how to do it. But I've made a start. The map shows the site of my office - a chambre de bonne (maids room) in the 16th Arrondissement, Paris. If I were looking to go out for lunch I could enter restaurants in the Search Bar below the map and it will throw up a list of restaurants in the vicinity. When I tried it it showed Stella which is a rather posh seafood restaurant with valet parking just across the street from my office. You can then scroll through a list of restaurants in the area. It's not definitive but I think I can add to this list (once I figure out how to do it). But you can refine the list by entering Thai Restaurants or whatever. You can also do this with hotels/bars/swimming pools - all sorts of things. And as I understand it you can customize it. With caveats - Google say they don't want their maps used for illegal activity - like showing the drug dealers in an area. I've just tried it with other terms. I entered Gay Bars and it threw up a list - most of which I'd never heard of - but it did list Queen which I know for sure is a gay club in the Champs Elysées. So if you bookmark or RSS this page I'll be building on it. I want eventually to have a Site Map for each Paris Arrondissement - showing where to stay, where to eat, what to do.

One of the neat things about these Google Maps is that they can show you how to get from one place to another. For instance, when I click on restaurants and it shows Stella across the road. I then click on the green arrow unerneath the map Show more results and listed under G is a restaurant a block away called La Palette de Courbet. I then click on Show Directions and it shows me exactly how to get there from my office. I can see photographs of the restaurant and read a review. Then I can click on a hyperlink to take me directly to the restaurant's website which tells me everything I need to know. In this case it's a Lebanese Restaurant that also does Take-Away meals. Closed during August. Cool eh?

Big News today from Google

Today we're excited to announce a new feature on Google Maps that allows you to add maps to your blog or website just by copying and pasting a snippet of HTML. And once you embed the map, it has all the same functionality of the Google Maps you know and love; it's clickable, draggable, and zoomable.

Adding a map to your website or blog is now as easy as embedding a YouTube video. No programming skills are required, and there's no need to sign up for a Maps API key. All it takes is three simple steps:

1. Go to Google Maps and pull up the map you want to embed. It can be a location, a business, a set of driving directions, search results, or a map you've created using our map-making tools.

2. Then click "Link to this page" in the top right-hand corner. Copy the text that you see in the second box.

3. Paste that text into your blog editor or into the HTML of your webpage. We use an iframe so it works on most blog hosting sites like Blogger.
Voila! The map appears on your blog.

Have a look at Google-latlong.blogspot.com

So here's an overlay of the Paris Arrondissements. I could have also added Paris Metro, Paris Shopping, 2007 Tour de France, Hotels, Bars & Nightclubs - in fact anything that others have made for this destination (and there's already quite a few to select from. Have a look at Most Wanted Criminals of Los Angeles!). I could also build my own map that others could get the code for and embed in their sites. I have a couple of ideas in mind. Isn't this great? So if you were planning a conference in Paris, for instance, you could give all the attendees access to their own special map with directions on how to get to the Conference Centre, what Metro stops are nearby, where to eat, what to do.

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