que monumentale de
Paris_ and the structures then covered up again; in the following year,
excavations made in the course of enlarging the Palais de Justice
brought to light in the court of the Sainte-Chapelle and under the
houses to the south of it remains of walls of the ancient Roman palace.
The old historians of Paris, indeed, relying upon the testimony of
Ammianus Marcellinus, state that one of the two Roman palaces was
situated in the western end of the island which formed the ancient
Lutetia. In 1844 the laying out of a new street between the Palais de
Justice and the Hotel-Dieu revealed two portions of edifices the use of
which was unknown, but which, by the thickness of their walls and the
nature of their construction, were supposed to have formed some part of
the public structures. It has been considered that these various
vestiges of important buildings situated in the centre of Lutetia
indicate that they surrounded an open market-place or commercial
exchange.

But the discovery of one of the most important and interesting vestiges
of the Gallo-Roman city was reserved for the latter part of the year
1869, when, in laying out the Rue Monge, on the eastern slopes of Mont
Sainte-Genevieve, there was revealed the ancient amphitheatre, with
which no Roman city of importance could dispense. Although these
important vestiges lay only some twelve metres below the surface, and
though at least two passages in mediaeval chronicles were known which
alluded to the locality, this contribution to the history of the city
was delayed to this late date. Alexandre Neckham, a professor in Paris,
writing in 1180, mentions, in the course of four verses, the vast ruins
of a Roman amphitheatre, dedicated to Venus, which was situated near the
Abbey of Saint-Victor. Adrien de Valois cites a _cartulary_, or registry
of a monastery, dated in 1310, in which mention is made of three
sections of vineyards situated in the district known as _les Areinnes_.
A date for the construction of this amphitheatre was conjectured by M.
Adrien de Longperier, from the bringing together of three of the broken
stones of the edifice--selected from the sixteen bearing inscriptions
now in the Musee Carnavelet and from twelve others bearing similar
inscriptions and evidently from the same source, but which were found in
1847 in the Parvis-Notre-Dame, having been taken in later days to
construct the wall of fortification of the city. By placing three of
these