About 800 years ago, King Philippe Auguste built an enormous wall around Paris.

As I've said on the show a couple times before, three things can happen to ancient city

walls like this one. They can either get totally demolished as cities grow. They can remain

perfectly intact so you can see medieval towns around France with big

walls around them where you can walk on the ramparts and enter through an old city gate.

But the third and the most interesting thing that can happen is the city swallows up the wall,

never to be seen again. That is what happened in Paris.

And today, I'm going to take you on the last stretch of the Philip August wall to see what is hidden from us and to find some vestiges of this ancient and magnificent wall.

That's right.

This is the Yearful Time podcast.

My name is Oliver G.

This is the A-B season,

and W is for Wall.

Music That was some original music from press, Maxen, written about the wall.

Actually, I'll talk more about that in a second, but this is going to be an on-the-go episode,

and I'm going to try and take you on a journey behind the scenes, behind the closed doors,

to show you some fascinating vestiges of the wall that we've never talked about

before, specifically what would be the southwest corner of it.

In fact, where I'm standing now, where I recorded that intro, is somewhere I've never

stood before.

I'm inside the Institute, the National Institute of France, the Institue Nacional de France,

and I'm standing at the top of the steps of the Mazarin Library, the Bibliotech Mazarin, where I've got to say it's an absolutely beautiful courtyard that looks extremely close to the public. It turns out it's extremely open to the public. You just got to walk through that front door. Why we're interested in it today

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