If we put a little order in the Roads of France

By presenting to the Municipal Council his proposal relating to the reestablishment of the starting point of the roads of France, Mr. Georges Lemarchand awakened very old historical memories.

From time immemorial, in fact, the Parvis Notre-Dame was adopted as the central point from which all the great royal roads radiated; It is true that this central point has varied over the centuries and has been somewhat displaced from one era to another.

The one who remains best indicated has an odyssey worth remembering. Not far from a fountain erected on the Parvis in 1625, rebuilt in 1639 and demolished in 1748, there was a very ancient statue, a thousand years old, which had been nicknamed "Monsieur Legris", as the long wear of its stone had made it cold and gray. She was also called the “Faster of Notre-Dame”, because the legendary and imprecise character she represented remained perpetually. without drinking or eating. It disappeared in 1748, at the same time as the fountain.

This statue, still considered a terminal, was replaced in 1767 by a tile attached to a post from which all the distance routes of France departed and which was torn down in 1790.

The place was moved a little by letters patent of Louis XV and considered as the center of Paris, it was fixed at the meeting point of the capital line of the metropolitan church and the line of the Notre-Dame bridge, in the middle of the Petit -Bridge.
In 1848, the route center was re-established exactly at the location of the “Jeûneur”.

To restore some order to all these inaccuracies, the councilor of the 4th proposes to establish the starting point of all the major roads of France in the middle of the Parvis refuge; he requests that the mileage of national and departmental roads be redone and that their numbering be carried out by the services of the Prefecture of the Seine with regard to Paris, and by the road services for the rest of France,