Bastille into an open public area, with a tall column at the centre surrounded by fountains, dedicated to Louis XVI as the "restorer of public freedom". The number of prisoners held in the Bastille at any one time declined sharply towards the end of Louis's reign; the prison contained ten prisoners in September 1782 and, despite a mild increase at the beginning of 1788, by July 1789 only seven prisoners remained in custody. Before any official scheme to close the prison could be enacted, however, disturbances across Paris brought a more violent end to the Bastille. By July 1789, revolutionary sentiment
Paris in the Middle Ages urine were routinely emptied out of windows onto the street. Along with fears of an uprising of the turbulent Parisians, the smells and bad air of central Paris were a major reason why Charles V moved the royal residence permanently from the Île de la Cité outside the old city walls to a new residence, the Hotel Saint-Pol, near the new Bastille fortress. The calendar of Parisians in the Middle Ages was filled with holidays and events that were widely and enthusiastically celebrated, perhaps because of the precarious lives of the ordinary populace. In addition to holidays for Christmas, Easter,