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‘We’re ready for them, Messire. The Ciutat is well stocked. The hourds are completed to protect the walls from their sappers; all broken sections or points of weakness have been repaired and blocked; all the towers are manned.’
High up on the walls you will see modern reproductions of medieval hourds. These wooden galleries were designed to allow the defenders of the Château to attack invading forces, should the Cité itself be breached, and hurl projectiles down at them.
Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration of the Cité chose slate cones instead of flatter clay-tiled roofs, which have survived on the older Gallo-Roman towers. Detractors say that the 19th-century restoration transformed the Cité in the way Saint-Louis, the French king, would have wanted it.