The Shield

If you ever find yourself at the Hôtel de Ville métro station, waiting for the Ligne 1 to take you in the direction of La Défense, you might notice this mosaic on the wall.

Ok, it's a coat of arms thingy, the medieval shield of some noble family. You take a picture of it, thinking it's kind of cool, and you move on. End of story.

Except then you start seeing the shield everywhere, in different materials, colors, historical styles, and designs.

You see it on the Vélib' stations, on the Mairie of the 2e arrondissement, and on an awesome Art Deco school in the 11th.


You see one-sail, two-sail, red-sail, blue-sail versions - used as a distinctive logo for elementary schools, and on the guardian's building at the entrance to the Parc des Buttes Chaumont that you took a dozen pictures of over the course of the year. (How did you not notice this before??)


This thing is literally everywhere, especially in its present-day iteration, a simple, curved, diamond-shaped sail on a crescent-shaped boat. You see this boat on all park signs, on the backs of public toilets, and on trash and recycling bins.


When you look it up on Wikipedia, you learn lots of interesting things. The boat symbol on the city's coat of arms dates from around 1190 but was made official in 1358 by King Charles V (who also completed and lived in the donjon at the Château de Vincennes). The boat looks good on the entrance gate to the Parc Monceau, and on the centerpiece of the Pont Alexandre III (an epic bridge).


In its pure form (best represented by the mosaic at the Hôtel de Ville métro station), a single-sail, white boat floats on water within a field of red. Above, yellow fleurs-de-lys suspended in a blue field represent French royal power, and specifically that of the Bourbon royal line. The blue and red in the coat-of-arms represent the Paris Commune, a revolutionary body that provided the same colors to the tricolor French flag we know today. But even uncolored it gets its point across, like when it's tacked onto an electricity meter, or yet another school in the 20th, or a "Theatres of Paris" cylindrical billboard.


The ship and the motto, "Fluctuat nec mergitur," or "It is beaten by the waves without being submerged," pay hommage both to the city's resilience in the face of millenia of attacks and to the power of the medieval shipping guilds. I wonder how those medieval dudes would have felt about having a symbol of their power sculpted in iron on a fence outside a park, or on yet another school.


Clearly, this city has some kind of complex. Or a very, very savvy and consistent marketing campaign aimed at subtly marking the city's influence on everyday life. Whatever they're doing, I'm hooked on finding more of these. At least until another of Paris's many open but overlooked secrets catches my eye . . .