It was 10 months ago that terrorists entered the offices of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo and killed 11 people, most of them journalists, including the editor in chief. A 12th person was killed nearby.

It was a few days ago that I realized the offices of Charlie Hebdo were in the Paris arrondissement where we are staying, the 11th, and I decided to walk down and have a look at the scene of the tragedy.

It was a sobering experience because of what I knew before I arrived. If someone were to drop by, at 10 Rue Nicolas-Appert, he or she would have no idea of the cold-blooded murders that went on in a room above the street.

(For a fine recap, posted a week after the shootings, see this BBC piece.)

There are no markings at the scene of the murders. No plaque in a wall. Looking at the building, from across the narrow street, it is almost as if the slaughter didn’t happen.

Nothing about the structure says “newspaper” aside, perhaps, from a few more windows than usual.

The magazine was part of a three-address building that stands about four stories high in the middle of what is otherwise a quiet residential area.

Workmen could be seen in what appeared to be the ground floor of the Charlie Hebdo address, changing things, perhaps, for a new client to take over. Though it seems hard to imagine anyone would move in there within a year of the killing. “Too soon”, as the comedians say.

The newspaper’s staff and their editor, Stephane Charbonnier, knew they were at risk for their Islamic depictions in cartoons, which generated great anger among some Muslims. (The office was fire-bombed in 2011.)

In 2013, Al Qaeda put Charbonnier on their version of a “most-wanted” list, and he lived under police protection in his latter years.

He and the staff continued with provocative content, which was both foolhardy and incredibly brave.

(It is not only Muslims the the magazine angered. Charlie Hebdo seems to make a point of ticking off people in very blunt ways.)

In 2012, the editor, Charbonnier, said in an interview: “I am not afraid of reprisals, I have no children, no wife, no car, no debt. It might sound a bit pompous, but I’d prefer to die on my feet than to live on my knees.”

The two brothers who killed 11 people in that second-story office, as they sat for an editorial meeting, as well as a policeman not far away, were themselves killed two days later.

Meanwhile, Charlie Hebdo has moved to another building.

The New York Times describes it as “a new, heavily fortified newsroom with bulletproof windows, a panic room and a labyrinth of safety doors — security measures that cost 1.5 million euros, or $1.65 million.”

I didn’t stay long, looking at 10 Rue Nicolas-Appert. Local residents were out and about, and they probably are tired of visitors wandering past, checking their maps, to get a look at the place.

The shootings sparked enormous parades in Paris calling for freedom of the press, and messages on the topic can be seen all over the central monument at the Place de la Republique, which is a few miles north of the murder scene.

The staff of Charlie Hebdo was undoubtedly reckless. But they also believed that freedom of expression was important enough to die for. As a career journalist, that idea gets my attention.

The magazine’s dead have left a powerful legacy. The Times wrote that what happened, on January 7, produced in Charlie Hebdo an “instant transformation from a relatively obscure, parochial French publication to an international symbol, celebrated by free-speech advocates.”

Powerful stuff.