It is a small park with a modest but impressive monument, the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation. If you go down the stairs to view it you will see 200,000 crystal dots symbolizing 200,000 dead.
Open daily except Monday, 10am to 5pm. (free)
The Martyrs of the Deportation Memorial is a Parisian monument dedicated to the memory of all the deportees from France between 1941 and 1944 located on the Ile de la Cité in Paris. Its architecture helps to evoke the sufferings of those who were deported and to encourage the visitor to reflect and meditate.
This memorial has been classified as a historical monument since November 23, 20071 and is one of the high places of national memory of the Ministry of the Armed Forces2.
Designed by the architect Georges-Henri Pingusson, the vast, hexagonal, dimly-lit crypt opens onto the gallery covered by luminous rods representing the deported people killed in the camps and the ashes of an unknown deportee from Natzweiler-Struthof camp.
Either side of the crypt, two small galleries contain earth from the different camps and ashes brought back from the cremation ovens, enshrined in triangular urns.
All around, the names of the camps and excerpts from poems by Robert Desnos, Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Jean-Paul Sartre and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are inscribed in red characters.
Every year, on the last Sunday of April, the Memorial is visited in honour of the National Day of Remembrance of the Victims and Heroes of the Deportation.