Memorial · 1929
Préfecture de police
Address · Île de la Cité, 75004 Paris
Metro · Cité (4)
Today · In operation. Still the Police Prefecture, seen from outside.
The story
The Préfecture de Police occupies, on the Île de la Cité facing Notre-Dame, the former Caserne de la Cité, built from 1863 to 1867 to designs by Pierre-Victor Calliat to house the Paris Guard, on the site of the churches of Saint-Éloi and Saint-Germain-le-Vieux. When the Préfecture's former premises, near the Palais de Justice, were burned on 24 May 1871 at the end of the Commune, the administration moved into the barracks, at 7 boulevard du Palais. The Seine department bought the building at the end of 1878, and the Garde Républicaine shared it with the police until 1929, the very year of the Crowley affair.
Crowley, Regardie and Maria de Miramar came under the foreigners' department, responsible for the identity cards of foreign residents. On 17 January 1929, an inspector came to avenue de Suffren to enquire about these cards, about Crowley's drug use and about his travels over the past year; on 29 January, the head of the foreigners' office assured his friend Gerard Aumont that Crowley need not worry. Yet on 5 March a summons to the Préfecture was issued to the three residents. Being ill, Crowley obtained a postponement to Friday 8 March, when Regardie and Maria de Miramar went alone: they were handed refusals of residence dated 15 February, with orders to leave the country before 9 March. An inspector brought the same document to Crowley that afternoon.
Regardie called on the American consul, who replied that there were no personal charges against him: he was paying for his position as Crowley's secretary. Turned back to England on 10 March, Regardie and Maria de Miramar fell back on Brussels. Crowley, for his part, was allowed on 10 March to stay provisionally on account of his health, and kept himself there thanks to medical certificates. When the affair broke in the press in mid-April, the Préfecture confirmed the refusal of residence to British journalists while denying any link with the accusations of espionage; Crowley said he did not know the reason and demanded a public inquiry.
The building still houses the Préfecture de Police, renovated from 2009 to 2014. It is above all famous for the police uprising of 19 August 1944 and the German surrender signed on 25 August in the billiard room. Its façades can be seen from the parvis of Notre-Dame, boulevard du Palais or quai du Marché-Neuf; the offices are not open to the public.