Maison Millière

The full story

According to the City, the house was built in 1483, the very year Louis XI died, by the merchant Guillaume Millière. According to its present owners, he was a cloth merchant and had it built with his wife, Guillemette Durand, on the site of a hovel bought from the canons of the Sainte-Chapelle. It stands at 10 Rue de la Chouette, formerly 10 Rue Babeuf.

On the ground floor, two large arches originally held the shop displays. Every morning the shopkeeper opened his wooden shutter and folded a board down towards the street to lay out his goods: the “ouvroir”, the workshop and shop, was ready for customers. Markets were then held in the streets and squares, each with its own speciality, and stalls lined the walls of the main churches such as Notre-Dame.

The City describes the typical timber-framed house of the period this way. Stone, being expensive, was kept for the ground floor so that the wood would not rot. Above, the frame was assembled on the ground and then raised with winches, cables and pulleys, and the gaps were usually filled with daub, a mix of straw and earth. Many façades jutted out over the street: this enlarged the upper floors, while tax depended on the ground area.

According to its owners, it features basket-handle arches, a stone bench and timber framing in St Andrew’s crosses. A large carved beam shows a lion holding a shield with the founders’ initials, two Gothic Gs joined by a love knot, while a cat and an eagle-owl in polychrome earthenware keep watch on the roof. Long closed and once used as a hardware store’s warehouse, the house was last restored in 1927, then opened to the public in 1998. Still privately owned, it has kept its commercial purpose.