SAINT-GERMAIN DES PRES

District of Saint-Germain des Pres

Sure you will visit the Louvre, the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, but if you have not spent the afternoon in a cafe in Paris people watching, you have not experienced the true feeling of Paris. There is no area better for this ultimate Parisian experience than Saint-Germain. Sartre held his heated discussions on existentialism at Cafe de Flore (on Saint-Germain Boulevard and Le Tabou (rue Dauphine),where Simone de Beavoir and Albert Camus were also known to hang, while Hemingway soaked up the atmosphere at Brasserie Lipp right nearby. Though unlikely you would run in to Picasso or Sartre today, you will run elbows with rich and famous, fashionable bigwigs, artists both staving and commissioned, wiry intellectual types and of course, fellow tourists, in the cafes of Saint-Germain, located on the Left Bank (Rive Gauche) across the Seine from the Tuileries.

While your conversation may more match those of the group next to you debating directions to the next attraction, you can lose yourself in thought imagining what it would have been like to frequent Les Deux Magots at the same time as the writers of the ‘Lost Generation’ of the 20s and 30s and the existentialists who together transformed 20th century thought. The world’s first coffeehouse, Le Procope was built in 1686, but don’t expect any coffee at this venue in the Rue de l’Ancienne-Comedie, unless it accompanies your meal at the fine dining restaurant in its place.

You can easily book an apartment in Saint-Germain in order to take advantage of this, the heart of cafe culture in Paris. In addition to being near some of the most famous and interesting cafes in Paris, the Saint-Germain area has some of the best museums, restaurants, galleries and shops in the City of Lights.

This carefree and relaxed area of Paris lies in the 6th arrondissement, and is one of the best areas to book an apartment in to experience Paris as a local during your time in the city. This is the best neighborhood to wander without a plan, so explore the area freely. If you head east you’ll hit the Musee D’Orsay, the eastern border before hitting Invalides and the Eiffel Tower quarter, to the north you can wander until the river Seine, to the south you arrive at the Luxembourg quarter, while the Latin Quarter borders Saint-Germain to the West.

 

Your centre of gravity is the Boulevard Saint-Germain, a major thoroughfare you will crisscross several times, and the most important part of Baron Hausmann’s renovation of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s. The wide boulevard with spacious sidewalks made the cafe culture possible, replacing numerous small streets which still jut out in places in small, aimless sections. Boulevard Saint-Germain has high end shopping available such as Armani , Rykiel and Zadig et Voltaire and nearby you can find the Institut d’Etudes Politques on Boulevard Raspail, which is one of the finest political science schools in Europe. Saint-Germain played a notable role in American politics, as Benjamin Franklin and John Adams signed the Treaty of Paris here to recognise the independence of US colonies.

 

Perhaps you pass the Rue de Grenelle and its excellent market Marche de Grenelle. At 6, rue de Fuerstenberg, dip in to the Musee Eugene Delacroix, where the romantic painter lived between 1857-1863 to be near his work at the St-Sulpice Church on the Place Saint-Sulpice – a church only slightly smaller than Notre Dame and the second largest in the city.

Saint-Germain mixes the intellectual with art, fashion and riches, the latter can be seen at the money museum – the Musee de la Monnaie, at 11 Quai de Conti. The former French mint now houses an extensive collection of historical coins and medallions.

Not quite original enough for you? How about the Musee de la Legion d’Honneur in 2, rue de Bellechasse – the only museum dedicated to the highest honors awarded by countries worldwide as well as an expansive collection of the art of gold and medals form orders of knighthood.

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