Saint Germain des Prés

No other arrondissement hides as many treasures and so much history as Saint Germain. Under the patronage and presence of the aristocracy (12 princes and over 300 barons and counts before the French Revolution) Saint Germain became the most sophisticated and complex area in Paris.

This walk takes us from the former abbey of Saint Germain des Prés up to the foot of Notre Dame. We discover artists’ studios, art galleries, antiquarian bookshops, we dive into the nostalgia of many hues and shades of discreet old courtyards on Rue Jacob, Rue Saint André des Arts, we enter the Ecole des Beaux Arts (School of Fine Arts) built on the former estate of Marguerite de Valois (also called Queen Margot).

The Cour du Commerce Saint André is history itself. It is the heart of the 18th century Enlightenment in Paris, the place where the feverish intellectual turmoil reached its peak, where Diderot and D’Alembert conceived the idea of the Encyclopédie, where Voltaire wrote “Candide”.

At Procope, (the oldest restaurant in Paris - 1685), Benjamin Franklin drafted the alliance between Louis XVI and the new American republic.

During the years of the French Revolution, Marat, Danton, Camille Desmoulins met at Marat’s printing shop. The German carpenter Schmidt built and developed the guillotine by testing it on live sheep. Here is how Dr Guillotin described his Luison or Luisette (the early name for the guillotine) at the National Assembly in October 1789 : “the blade whistles, the head falls, the blood gushes forth, the man is no more - with my machine I shall make your heads topple off in a flash and you will feel but a light breeze on your necks”

Le Café des Deux Magots, le Café de Flore and the Brasserie Lipp were favorites of French and American artists for decades and a place for Surrealists’ meetings in the late 20th century.