The parvis was first mentioned in 1160, just before the construction of Notre-Dame began. During the Middle Ages, the square was only about 1,000 square meters, roughly one tenth of its current size. Surrounding buildings at the time included Saint-Jean-le-Rond and Notre-Dame to the east, the chapel of the Hôtel-Dieu to the south, and the Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés and the church of to the west. During the Middle Ages, convicted criminals were often taken to the parvis before their executions to make public confession. The parvis was not used as a place of execution, however, until the Reformation, and even then this was reserved for those convicted of religious crimes. Examples of this include Jacques Belon in 1548 and Jean Thuret in 1550, both of whom attacked a statue of the Virgin inside Notre-Dame, and François Sarazin in 1670 who murdered a priest inside Notre-Dame.
