Walking Tour Saint-Germain-des-Prés – Intellectual Paris

Saint-Germain-des-Prés Church and Ancient Abbey

The Saint-Germain-des-Prés church is the oldest in Paris.

The church was part of an abbey founded in the mid-6th century; the present building was mainly built from the 10th to the 12th century. Even if it was heavily damaged during the French Revolution period and modified in the 17th and 19th centuries, it remains an exceptional witness to both Romanesque Architecture and Early Gothic Architecture.

Our tour includes external commentaries about the church and the ancient abbey.

Each time it is possible (if the church is open to visitors, which is usually the case), the tour includes a brief passage inside the church.

For those with a specific interest in sacred architecture and the Middle Ages, we offer a tour version that focuses on the church and the ancient abbey.

The Renaissance and the Wars of Religion

The Saint-Germain neighborhood is home to one of Paris’s most famous Renaissance buildings: the Palace of the Abbots of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Built in 1586 for the Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, oncle of the King Henri IV, archbishop of Rouen and Abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. This is the second-oldest building in Paris, constructed in caracteristic brick and stone style of the Renaissance (after the Hôtel de Scipion-Sardini in the 5th arrondissement).

Saint-Germain-des-Prés is somehow considered the birthplace of French Protestantism, as Lefèvre d’Etaples began his translation of the Bible in the abbey.

During the Renaissance, the district was a refuge for French Protestants, known as the Huguenots. A street in Saint-Germain, “rue des Marais”, was even called “Little Genoa” in reference to the city of the French Protestant leader John Calvin. The first French Protestant synod occurred there, in the spring of 1559 (now rue Visconti number 4).

The French Revolution

The Saint-Germain-des-Prés Guided Tour also includes an emblematic place of the French Revolution, the “Cour du Commerce Saint-André.” In this narrow street, we will speak of prominent political figures of the period, such as Robespierre, Marat, Danton, Desmoulins; we will also talk of a more technical one: the Doctor Guillotin, inventor of the famous and terrible Guillotine!

More confidential, there is also in rue Jacob, one of the few remaining buildings built during the troubled time of the French Revolution (“Directoire” regime 1798).

If you are more specifically interested in the French Revolution, we propose a French Revolution Saint-Germain Tour.   

The 19th and 20th Century Painting

You will also see that some famous 19th-century painters, such as David, Ingres, Delacroix, Gros, Monet, and Bazille, had strong connections with the Saint-Germain-des-Prés District, which is indeed the one where the Académie des Beaux-Arts is located. A 20th-century one also had some: Picasso, who painted nothing less than Guernica there in rue des Grands Augustins, and a sculpture of his mistress, Dora Maar, stands in a square alongside the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Church.

If you are more specifically interested in Picasso we propose a Picasso Museum Tour.

It is in Saint-Germain-des-Près, rue Bonaparte, which was organized in 1925 as the first Surrealist exhibition.

This tradition of Saint-Germain-des-Prés painters was nothing new; the district already housed many painters in the 17th century, for excellent reasons that we will discover on the tour.

The importance of text studies for Benedictine monks from the early Middle Ages to the end of the abbey during the French Revolution.

In the first half of the 17th century, the Benedictine order, which had fallen into a state of disorganization and laxity in France, was reorganized as the Congregation of Saint-Maur. Saint-Germain-des-Prés Abbey became the siege house of the congregation and, consequently, a prominent intellectual center.

Saint-Germain-des-Près church is the main vestige of the former powerful abbey siege house of the Saint-Maur congregation. The famous 17th-century philosopher and scientist René Descartes is buried there, as is the poet and critic Nicolas Boileau. Photo © Broaden horizons.

The establishment of French classical literature and theater in the 17th century, with notable figures such as Boileau, Molière, and Racine, is closely linked to the Saint-Germain-des-Prés District.

18th-century enlightenment with Voltaire, the Encyclopedists: Diderot and D’Alembert, or even Benjamin Franklin who is said to have written the project of the alliance of his new republic with Louis the XVI kingdom or some elements of the USA constitution in the famous Café Procope.

You will discover in the tour that the link between Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the beginning of the USA is much more vital than knowing what Benjamin Franklin exactly did in the Procope Café.

In 1805 the Académie Française (the French academy) was transferred to Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

In 1821  was founded the Société de Géographie the world’s oldest geographical society, this is there that the creation of the Panama Canal was decided in 1879.  

19th century French novelists and poets: Balzac, Musset, George Sand, Théophile Gautier, Mérimée, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, etc.

The first two-thirds of the 20th century which correspond to the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Golden Age, a period of considerable contribution of the district to literature with Colette, Albert Camus, Louis Aragon, Raymond Queneau, Boris Vian, Elsa Triolet, etc.  and with also all the poets and writers of the lost generation as Ernest Hemingway, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, etc.

The tour typically ends at the Métro Odeon near where Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company 1919-1941 bookshop was rue de l’Odéon.

For those more interested in these subjects, we are preparing a Saint-Germain-des-Prés Literature tour.

The legendary Saint-Germain began at the end of the 1880s with the creation of three now world-famous cafés: Les Deux Magots, Le Flore, and Brasserie Lipp, which would become, in the next century, the meeting places of intellectuals, writers, artists, and influential figures.

Café de Flore, view from inside.

The list of all the famous people related is too extensive to be displayed here (see dedicated literature tour). Nevertheless, regarding the question of who the most iconic customers of the Deux Magots were, the answer is obvious: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and their influence on existentialism. The square in front of the café bears their names.

The main milestones are the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the 17th and 18th centuries.

Nevertheless, the 19th century is also prominent in the district. Indeed, the Boulevard Saint-Germain is one of the most famous Haussmannian boulevards and was a personal project of the Baron Haussmann. From time to time, along the boulevard, some facades of ancient streets have been preserved.

But, the Saint-Germain neighborhood also pioneered Paris’s urban renovation as the first straight street in Paris, the rue Dauphine, was opened there a quarter of a millennium before, in 1608, by order of the king Henri IV.

Architectural styles of Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood’s long history include the following:

• Romanesque,
• Early Gothic,
• Renaissance,
• 17th Classical (French Baroque),
• 18th Neoclassical,
• Haussmannian,
• Neo-Romanesque,
• Art Deco,
• New Deal, etc.