Saint-Germain-des-Prés Walking Tour

Saint-Germain-des-Prés Church and Ancient Abbey

The Saint-Germain church is one of the oldest, if not the most senior, Paris churches.

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 of the Romanesque and the Early Gothic architectures.

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

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

For those who are more specifically interested in sacred architecture and middle age, we offer a version of the tour which focuses on the church and the ancient abbey.

The Renaissance and the Wars of Religion

Saint-Germain district houses one of Paris’s most famous Renaissance buildings: the palace of the abbots of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Built in 1586, this is the second oldest in Paris in the brick and stone style (after hôtel de Scipion-Sardini in the 5th district).

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 shelter for the French Protestants (the Huguenots). A St Germain street rue des Marais was even called “little Genova” in reference to the city of French Protestant leader Calvin. The first French protestant synod took place 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 major political figures of the period as Robespierre, Marat, Danton, Desmoulins; we will also speak of a more technical one: the Doctor Guillotin, inventor of the famous and terrible Guillotine!

More confidential, there is also at 46 rue Jacob, one of the few remaining buildings built right during the troubled time of the French Revolution (Directoire 1798). 

The 19th Century Painting

You will also see in the tour that some famous 19th-century painters, such as David, Ingres, Delacroix, Gros, Monet, Bazille, etc., were having strong links with the Saint-Germain-des-Prés District the one of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. A 20th-century one also had some: Picasso who painted nothing less than Guernica there and let a sculpture of his mistress Dora Maar in a square alongside the Saint-Germain Church.

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

For those who want to go more in-depth in this field, a thematic Saint-Germain-des-Prés Fine Arts and Painting Tour starting in Pont-des-Arts, including Saint-Sulpice Church and finishing in the Luxembourg Garden.

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 mathematician Descartes and poet Boileau are buried there. Photo © Broaden horizons.

The establishment of French classical literature and theater in the 17th century with Boileau, Molière, Racine, etc. is strongly linked with the Saint-Germain-des-Prés District.

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.

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 Metro 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.

Café de Flore, view from inside.

Architecture and Urbanism: a Transerversal Aspect of the Tour

The history of this central district of Paris is very ancient; we will discover and understand the evolution of the urbanism of the zone over centuries.

The main milestones are the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

We will for sure consequently discover corresponding architectural styles of these periods:

Roman, Early Gothic, Renaissance, 17th Classical (French Baroque), 18th Neoclassical, Haussmanian, Neo-Roman, Art-deco, etc.