3 Place St-Germain-des-Pres
01-55 42 81 33
Subway: St-Germain-des-Pres
Open: daily
Church of Saint- Germain- des- Pres is the oldest church in Paris. It was constructed in 542 as a basilica that stored holy relics. It wasn't very lucky. Normans managed to plunder and burn it down at least four times in forty years. Every time it was reconstructed in the early Romanesque architecture. The church was badly damaged in a fire of 1794 and restored in the 19th century. The facade of the church contains remains of the portal from the 12th century with subsequent additions of 1607. The bell tower is build in a traditional Romanesque style. The interior of the church contains the tombs of great French mathematician and a philosopher Descartes as well as Polish King Jan (John) Casimir.
Saint-Germain-des-Prés is a neighborhood located in the 6th District of Paris, around the church of the former abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Its inhabitants are called "germanopratinos". From the end of the Second World War, the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district became one of the most outstanding places of the intellectual and cultural life of Paris. Philosophers, writers, actors and musicians mingled in the brasseries and nightclubs (where bebop was invented) where existentialist thought coexisted with American jazz. Music par excellence of Saint-Germain-des-Prés post-war, jazz reigned in the so-called "caves" (caves) whose image and environment characterized the Saint-Germain-des-Prés of that time. The most famous was undoubtedly Le Tabou, located at No. 33 on Dauphine Street, where the Vian brothers played, and who frequented a number of American jazzmen such as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. Once the effervescence of the postwar period was over, Saint-Germain-des-Prés was also the favorite meeting place for the artisans and actors of the Nouvelle Vague, at the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s.
Today, the neighborhood has largely lost the
intellectual prestige it enjoyed in its golden age, that of
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, of the emblematic actress
and singer Juliette Gréco, of the filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and
François Truffaut, from poets such as Jacques Prévert or from
artists such as Giacometti or Boris Vian. However, you can still
find many artists on café terraces such as Les Deux Magots or Café
de Flore. The Brasserie Lipp is still a meeting place for
journalists, actors and actresses in vogue, and politicians
(François Mitterrand was a faithful client until his election to the
Presidency of the French Republic in 1981).
The seventeenth century buildings have been preserved, but the
change is already clear. Fashion shops, increasingly luxurious, are
gradually replacing small shops and bookstores, and
Saint-Germain-des-Prés is among the most expensive residential
neighborhoods in Paris.
In Saint-Germain-des-Prés is the Institut de France (Institute of
France), an institution created in the seventeenth century that
houses, among others, the Académie Française (Academy of the French
language) and the Académie des Beaux-Arts (Academy of Fine Arts).
Perhaps due to the proximity of the latter, the artistic vocation of
Saint-Germain-des-Prés has not declined, and remains the
neighborhood of the art galleries par excellence. Since 1998, an
association that has 64 German-German galleries (2009 figure),
promotes the activities of the branch in the neighborhood.
Until the 17th century the land where the quarter is located was
prone to flooding from the Seine, and little building took place there;
it was largely open fields, or prés, which gave the quarter its name.
The Saint-Germain-des-Prés Abbey in the center of the quarter was
founded in the 6th century by the son of Clovis I, Childebert I (ruled
511–558). In 542, while making war in Spain, Childebert raised his siege
of Zaragoza when he heard that the inhabitants had placed themselves
under the protection of the martyr Saint Vincent. In gratitude the
bishop of Zaragoza presented him with the saint's stole. When Childebert
returned to Paris, he caused a church to be erected to house the relic,
dedicated to the Holy Cross and Saint Vincent, placed where he could see
it across the fields from the royal palace on the Île de la Cité. In
558, St. Vincent's church was completed and dedicated by Germain, Bishop
of Paris on 23 December; on the same day, Childebert died. Close by the
church a monastery was erected. The Abbey church became the burial place
of the dynasty of Merovingian Kings. Its abbots had both spiritual and
temporal jurisdiction over the residents of Saint-Germain (which they
kept until the 17th century). Since the monastery had a rich treasury
and was outside the city walls, it was plundered and set on fire by the
Normans in the ninth century. It was rebuilt in 1014 and rededicated in
1163 by Pope Alexander III to Bishop Germain, who had been canonized.
The church and buildings of the Abbey were rebuilt in stone c. 1000
AD, and the Abbey developed into a major center of scholarship and
learning. A village grew up around the Abbey, which had about six
hundred inhabitants by the 12th century. The modern rue du Four is the
site of the old ovens of the monastery, and the dining hall was located
along the modern rue de l'Abbaye. A parish church, the church of
Saint-Pierre, also was built on the left bank, at the site of the
present Ukrainian catholic church; its parish covered most of the modern
6th and 7th arrondissements. The fortifications of King Philip Augustus
(1358–1383), the first built around the entire city, left
Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés just outside the walls.
Beginning in the Middle Ages, Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés was not only a religious and cultural center, but also an important marketplace, thanks to its annual fair, which attracted merchants and vendors from all over Europe. The Foire Saint-Germain was already famous in 1176, when it allocated half of its profits to the King. The fair opened fifteen days after Easter, and lasted for three weeks. The dates and the sites varied over the years; beginning in 1482 it opened on 1 October and lasted eight days; in other years it opened 11 November or 2 February. Beginning in 1486, it was held in a portion of the gardens of the Hôtel de Navarre, close to the modern rue Mabillon. There were three hundred forty stalls at the fair of 1483; Special buildings were erected for the fair in 1512, which contained 516 stalls. The fair was also famous for the gambling, debauchery, and the riots that ensued when groups of rowdy students from the nearby university invaded the fair. The buildings burned on the night of 17–18 March 1762, but were quickly rebuilt. The fair continued annually until the Revolution in 1789, when it was closed down permanently.
At the end of the 16th century, Margaret of Valois (1553–1615) the estranged wife of King Henry IV of France but still officially Queen of France, decided to build a residence in the quarter, in lands belonging to the Abbey near the Seine just west of the modern rue de Seine, near the present Institut de France. She built a palace with extensive gardens and established herself as a patroness of literature and the arts, until her death in 1615.
In 1673 the theatrical troupe in the city, the Comédie-Française, was
expelled from its building on rue Saint‑Honoré and moved to the left
bank, to the passage de Pont-Neuf (the present-day rue Jacques‑Callot),
just outside the Saint‑Germain quarter. Its presence displeased the
authorities of the neighboring Collége des Quatres-Nations (the present
Institut de France) and in 1689 they moved again, this time to the rue
des Fossés des Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés (the modern rue de
l'Ancienne‑Comédie), where they remained until 1770. The poor condition
of the theater roof forced them to move in that year to the right bank,
to the Hall of machines of the Tuileries Palace, which was much too
large for them. In 1797 they moved back to the Left Bank, to the modern
Odéon Theatre.
The first café in Paris appeared in 1672 at the
Saint-Germain Fair, served by an Armenian named Pascal. When the fair
ended he opened a more permanent establishment on the quai de l'Ecole,
where he served coffee for two sous and six deniers per cup. It was
considered more of a form of medication than a beverage to be enjoyed,
and it had a limited clientele. He left for London, and another Armenian
named Maliban opened a new café on the rue de Buci, where he also sold
tobacco and pipes. His café also had little commercial success, and he
left for Holland. A waiter from his café, an Armenian named Grigoire,
born in Persia, took over the business and opened it on rue Mazarine,
near the new home of Comédie-Française. When the theater moved in 1689,
he moved the café to the same location, on the rue des
Fossés‑Saint‑Germain. The café was then taken over by a Sicilian,
Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, who had worked as a waiter for Pascal
in 1672. he renamed the café Procope, and expanded its menu to include
tea, chocolate, liqueurs, ice cream and configures. It became a success;
the café is still in business. By 1723 there were more than three
hundred eighty cafés in the city. The Café Procope particularly
attracted the literary community of Paris, because many book publishers,
editors and printers lived in the quarter. The writers Diderot and
d'Alembert are said to have planned their massive philosophical work,
the Encyclopédie, at Procope, and at another popular literary meeting
place, the Café Landelle on the rue de Buci.
A significant event in American history took place on 3 September 1783 at the Hotel York at 56 rue Jacob; the signing of the Treaty of Paris between Britain and the United States, which ended the American Revolution and granted the U.S. its independence. The signing followed the American victory at the Siege of Yorktown, won with assistance of the French fleet and French army. The American delegation included Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay. After the signing, they remained for a commemorative painting by the American artist Benjamin West, but the British delegates refused to pose for the painting, so the painting was never finished.
Because of its numerous printers and publishers,
Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés, and especially the Cordeliers Section of
what is now the 6th arrondissement, became centers of revolutionary
activity after 1789; they produced thousands of pamphlets,
newspapers, and proclamations which influenced the Parisian
population and that of France as a whole. The prison of the Abbey of
Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés, a two-storey building near the church, was
filled with persons who had been arrested for suspicion of
counter-revolutionary motives: former aristocrats, priests who
refused to accept the revolutionary Constitution, foreigners, and so
forth. By September 1792, Paris prisons were quite full. The former
king and queen were political prisoners and were moved from the
Tuileries Palace to the old Knights Templar towers on the right
bank, where there was less risk of rescue or escape. France was at
war; the Duke of Brunswick had just issued his menacing manifesto,
stating that if the former monarchy were not restored, he would raze
Paris, and his troops were only a few days away. Now these political
prisoners began to be viewed as a genuine threat, should any of them
be conspiring with France's enemies. In what was a planned but
inhumane tactic, politicians at Paris sent bands of criminals, armed
mainly with pikes and axes, into each prison. Although at least one
deputy from the Convention accompanied each band, the results were
horrifying. Hundreds of prisoners were cut down in the first week in
September. As Englishman Arthur Young noted, the street outside one
prison literally ran red with blood. The former Cordeliers Convent,
closed by the revolutionaries, became the headquarters of one of the
most radical factions, whose leaders included Georges Danton and
Camille Desmoulins, though both would be run out by ever more
extreme factions. The radical revolutionary firebrand, Swiss
physician Jean-Paul Marat, lived in the Cordeliers Section.
The Monastery of Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés was closed and its religious
ornaments were taken away. The buildings of the monastery were
declared national property and sold or rented to private owners. One
large building was turned into a gunpowder storeroom; it exploded,
wrecking a large part of the monastery.
Another large
monastery in the quarter, that of the Petits-Augustins, had been
closed and stripped of its religious ornamentation. The empty
buildings were taken over by an archaeologist, Alexandre Lenoir, who
turned it into a depot to collect and preserve the furniture,
decorations, and art treasures of the nationalised churches and
monasteries. The old monastery officially became the Museum of
French Monuments. The paintings collected were transferred to the
Louvre, where they became the property of the Central Museum of the
Arts, the ancestor of the modern Louvre, which opened there at the
end of 1793.
The École des Beaux Arts, the national school of architecture, painting and sculpture, was established after the Revolution at 14 rue Bonaparte, on the site of the former monastery of the Petits-Augustins. Its faculty and students included many of the most important artists and architects of the 19th century; the faculty included Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Gustave Moreau. The students included painters Pierre Bonnard, Georges Seurat, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, and the American Thomas Eakins. Architects graduated from the school included Gabriel Davioud, Charles Garnier, and the Americans Julia Morgan, Richard Morris Hunt and Bernard Maybeck. The painter Eugène Delacroix established his residence and studio at 6 rue de Furstenberg and lived there from 1857 until his death in 1863.
The vast public works projects of Napoleon III and his Prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann in the 1860s dramatically changed the map of the quarter. To reduce the congestion of the narrow maze of streets on the Left Bank, Haussmann had intended to turn the rue des Ecoles into a major boulevard, but the slope was too steep, and he decided instead to construct boulevard Saint‑Germain through the heart of the neighborhood. It was not completed until 1889. He also began a wide south to north axis from the Montparnasse railroad station to the Seine. which became the rue de Rennes. The rue de Rennes was only completed as far as the parvis in the front of the Church of Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés by the end of the Second Empire in 1871, and stopped there, sparing the maze of narrow streets between boulevard Saint‑Germain and the river.
The quarter was also the temporary home of many musicians, artists
and writers from abroad, including Richard Wagner who lived for several
months on rue Jacob.
The writer Oscar Wilde spent his last days
in the quarter, at the small, run-down hotel called the Hotel d'Alsace
at 13 rue des Beaux‑Arts, near the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He wandered the
streets alone, and spent what money he had on alcohol. He wrote to his
editor, "This poverty really breaks one's heart: it is so sale, so
utterly depressing, so hopeless. Pray do what you can." He corrected
proofs of his earlier work, but refused to write anything new. "I can
write, but have lost the joy of writing", he told his editor. He kept
enough sense of humor to remark: "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel
to the death. One of us has got to go." He died on 30 November 1900, and
was first buried in a small cemetery outside the city, before being
reburied in 1909 at Pere Lachaise.
The small hotel where Wilde
died became famous; later guests included Marlon Brando and Jorge Luis
Borges. It was completely redecorated by Jacques Garcia, and is now a
five-star luxury hotel called L'Hotel.
In the first half of the 20th century, Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés and
nearly the whole of the 6th arrondissement, was a densely populated
working‑class neighborhood, whose population was declining. The
population of the 6th arrondissement was 101,584 in 1921, and dropped to
83,963. In the postwar years, the housing was in poor condition; only 42
percent of residences had indoor toilets, and only 23 percent had their
own showers or baths. By 1920 the population of the 6th fell to 47,942,
a drop of fifty percent in seventy years. In 1954 workers represented
19.2 percent of the population of the quarter; 18.1 percent in 1962.
In the years after World War II, Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés was known
primarily for its cafés and its bars, its diversity and its
non-conformism. The bars were a popular destination for American
soldiers and sailors after the war. It was also known as a meeting place
for the largely-clandestine gay community of Paris, which at the time
frequented the Café de Flore and the Café Carrefour, an all-night
restaurant. Because of its low rents and proximity to the University,
the quarter was also popular with students from the French colonies in
Africa. There were between three and five thousand African students in
the city; their association had its headquarters at 184 boulevard
Saint‑Germain and 28 rue Serpente. Because of the number of workers, it
also hosted an important bureau of the French Communist Party.
Immediately after the War, Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés and the nearby Saint-Michel neighbourhood became home to many small jazz clubs, mostly located in cellars, due to the shortage of any suitable space, and because the music at late hours was less likely to disturb the neighbors. The first to open in 1945 was the Caveau des Lorientais, near boulevard Saint‑Michel, which introduced Parisians to New Orleans Jazz, played by clarinetist Claude Luter and his band. It closed shortly afterwards, but was soon followed by cellars in or near Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés; Le Vieux-Columbier, the Rose Rouge, the Club Saint-Germain; and especially, Le Tabou. The musical styles were both traditional New Orleans jazz and bebop, led by Sydney Bechet and trumpeter Boris Vian; Mezz Mezzrow, André Rewellotty, guitarist Henri Salvador, and singer Juliette Gréco. The clubs attracted students from the nearby university, the Paris intellectual community, and celebrities from the Paris cultural world. They soon had doormen who controlled who was important or famous enough to be allowed inside into the cramped, smoke-filled cellars. A few of the musicians went on to celebrated careers; Sidney Bechet was the star of the first jazz festival held at the Salle Pleyel in 1949, and headlined at the Olympia music hall in 1955. The musicians were soon divided between those who played traditional New Orleans jazz, and those who wanted more modern varieties. Most of the clubs closed by the early 1960s, as musical tastes shifted toward rock and roll.
The literary life of Paris after World War II was centered in
Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés, both because of the atmosphere of non-conformism
and because of the large concentration of book stores and publishing
houses. Because most writers lived in tiny rooms or apartments, they
gathered in cafés, most famously the Café de Flore, the Brasserie Lipp
and Les Deux Magots, where the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and writer
Simone de Beauvoir held court. Sartre (1905–1980) was the most prominent
figure of the period; he was a philosopher, the founder of the school of
existentialism, but also a novelist, playwright, and theater director.
He also was very involved in the Paris politics of the left; after the
war he was a follower (though not a member) of the Communist Party, then
broke with the communists after the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and
became an admirer of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, then of
Mao-tse Tung. In 1968 he joined the demonstrations against the
government, standing on a barrel to address striking workers at the
Renault factory in Billancourt. The legends of Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés
describe him as frequenting the jazz clubs of the neighborhood, but
Sartre wrote that he rarely visited them, finding them too crowded,
uncomfortable and loud. Simone de Beauvoir (1902–1986), famous
philosopher, the lifelong companion of Sartre, was another important
literary figure, both as an early proponent of feminism and as an
autobiographer and novelist.
After the Second World War, the
neighbourhood became the centre of intellectuals and philosophers,
actors, singers and musicians. Existentialism co-existed with jazz and
chanson in the cellars on the rue de Rennes. Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de
Beauvoir, Juliette Gréco, Léo Ferré, Jean-Luc Godard, Boris Vian, and
François Truffaut were all at home there. But there were also poets such
as Jacques Prévert and artists such as Giovanni Giacometti. As a
residential address Saint‑Germain is no longer quite as fashionable as
the area further south towards the Jardin du Luxembourg, partly due to
Saint‑Germain's increased popularity among tourists.
On 29 November 1965, Mehdi Ben Barka, the leader of opposition to the government of the King of Morocco, was kidnapped as he emerged from the door of the Brasserie Lipp. his body was never found.
The area is served by the stations of the Paris Métro:
Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Mabillon
Many writers have written about this Parisian district in prose such as Boris Vian, Marcel Proust, Gabriel Matzneff (see La Nation française), Jean-Paul Caracalla or in Japanese poetry in the case of Nicolas Grenier. Egyptian writer Albert Cossery spent the later part of his life living in a hotel in this district. James Baldwin frequented the cafés, written about in Notes of a Native Son. Charles Dickens describes the fictional Tellson's Bank as "established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris" in his novel A Tale of Two Cities.
At one time numerous publishers were located in the area. Gentrifying real estate values then intervened. By 2009 many publishers, including Hachette Livre and Flammarion had moved out of the community.