The year was 1190. Paris needed protection.

The great king, Philip August, ordered for a wall to be built around the city.

But not just any wall. This would be a wall that would be the talk of the town, nay, the talk of the world. And indeed, people travelled from afar just to

catch a glimpse of this magnificent wall. And this wall stood proudly for hundreds of years,

until Paris no longer needed a wall. In fact, so proud were the locals of their army and their strength,

they didn't build a wall again, nothing like this. What happened instead?

The city of Paris swallowed up the Philip August wall, and it became forgotten.

This is the oldest Paris wall of which we still accurately know the plan.

But because it was swallowed up by the city, built upon, torn down in parts, reused and recycled,

many of its traces have been forgotten too. Intrigued by these traces and

came to find them, I set out on a treasure hunt to retrace the wall, and this is what I found.

You're listening to the Eiffel Tower, and I'm Oliver G. That was a bit of a dramatic introduction, wasn't it?

But this is a dramatic topic as far as I'm concerned.

What I'm going to tell you today is the story of how I retraced the Philip August Wall,

something I'm particularly passionate about.

If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know that about two years ago

I did a similar episode to this, but on the right bank.

Today, I'm only talking about the left bank.

If you're already a Patreon member, you know exactly what I'm talking about because I did a live video last week.

We're going to talk about that later.

But for now, I want to start with the facts, so we're all on the same page here.

The Philip August wall, it's actually got different names.

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