Saint-Germain-des-Prés Guided Tour

Saint-Germain-des-Prés Church and Ancien Abbey

The Saint-Germain church is one of the oldest, if not the oldest of 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 normally 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 the most famous Renaissance buildings of Paris: the palace of the abbots of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Built in 1586 this is the second oldest one of 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 Protestants leader Calvin. The first French protestant synod took place there in the spring of 1559 where is 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 very 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 as David, Ingres, Delacroix, Gros, Monet, Bazille, etc. were having strong links with the Saint-Germain-des-Près District the one of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. A 20th-century one also had some: Picasso who painted noting 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 had nevertheless nothing new, the district already housed a lot of painters in the 17th century for very good 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.

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

In the first half of the 17th the Benedictine order (fallen in France into a state of disorganization and laxity) was reorganized via 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.

18th-century enlightenment with Voltaire, the Encyclopédistes: 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 stronger than the question of knowing what Benjamin Franklin exactly did in the Procope.

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

19th century French novelists and poets: Balzac, Musset, George Sand, Théophile Gautier, Mérimée, Verlaine, Rimbau, 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 normally ends at the Metro Odeon not far from where was Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company 1919-1941 bookshop rue de l’Odéon.

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

The legendary Saint-Germain clearly started at the end of the years 1880 with the creation of three now world-famous cafés: Les Deux Magots, Le Flore, and Brasserie Lipp which will become in the next century the meeting places of intellectuals, writers, artists, and influent people.

Café de Flore, view from inside.

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

Architecture and Urbanism a Transerversal Aspect of the Tour

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

The main milestones are Middle Ages, Renaissance, 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, Hausmanian, Neo-Roman, Art-deco, etc.