Saint Louis island where a certain tranquility is still around has welcomed in its dwellings a lot of illustrious writers as Charles Baudelaire. During the Middle Ages, it was impossible to join the island by foot. It was a former place of pasture where cows and sheeps were transported by row-boats everyday. The laundresses used to dry their linen and lovers would meet there. They named too « the Cows Island ».
The « Fust bridge » was built in 1370 to reach the « Rive Gauche ». This « Fust » had the same signification as a barrel that indicated an oak container or the trunk of a tree meaning we could think that the bridge had been built and planed with many of them. At that time, there was a square tower named « La Tournelle » i.e. a small tower located at the entrance of the bridge. It was a part of the enclosure Philippe Auguste established between the end of the 11th century and the beginning of the 13th century to protect the capital from foreign attacks. In 1656, at the end they decided to build a stone bridge to have a better protection against bad weather, it will extended in 1841 with the king Louis Philippe.
Charles Baudelaire lived at « 22 quai de Béthune » on Saint Louis island. He is a French modern and famous poet and particularly for his book « Les fleurs du mal » where he will explore mazes of the consciousness by sharing his own internal drama which was finally nothing else that the human tragedy. Also « The spleen of Paris », small poems published in prose in journals. Modestly, Baudelaire will describe them as « Bagatelles » even if he was fully aware of what they were. He will inaugurate considerably through his texts a new literary form by capturing the strangeness of the daily life. Rimbaud and Mallarmé will be inspired by his literature quickly …