The Secrets of the Latin Quarter in Paris: A Historical-Culinary Itinerary

When you think of the Latin Quarter, you think (and rightly so) of the part that is close toNotre Dame Church, the Sorbonne and the Pantheon. However, the Latin Quarter has parts that are less well-known to the general public, in its eastern part, and that is where I want to focus on this itinerary.

There you will find a 16th-century mansion, a restaurant that I really liked, my favorite cake in Paris, a church with a fascinating story, Moffatt Street (which you are probably familiar with), and we will end with a 2,000-year-old amphitheater, where we will discover how to say strip club in Latin.

This is a route for advanced and well-traveled hikers, as part of it is uphill, but I'm sure you will enjoy the walk as much as I enjoyed it when I wrote it.

The starting point and route map

We will start the tour outside the Les Gobelins metro (line 7), which is located in the 13th arrondissement right on the border with the 5th arrondissement. Before we start walking, let me recommend a visit to the Manufacture des Gobelins museum, which is located right next door in the 13th arrondissement (42 Av. des Gobelins).

The museum is located not far from where the famous tapestry factory was located, founded by the Gobelin family, and therefore these wall areas are named after them. You will find exhibitions of tapestries and royal furniture there, but since this museum is not part of the trip, I will not elaborate on it. If you would like more information about visiting the place, you are welcome to go toOfficial websiteIn the future I promise a more in-depth article.

Route map

Points of interest are marked with a white star on a blue background. Restaurants that I mentioned are marked with a tray with a cover. In order to see all the points, it is recommended to zoom out on the map and then approach each point as needed. If you want to live in the area, you can find all kinds of hotels and vacation apartments.

Link to open the map in a new window

track

When you exit the metro, you'll find yourself thirsty on Avenue des Gobelins, which, along with Boulevard Saint Marcel, was created during the reign of Napoleon III. The name Saint Marcel comes from the village of Saint Marcel, which existed in the area since the Middle Ages and through which part of the route will pass.

After exiting the metro, start walking north and turn right on Rue du Fer à Moulin, where two surprises (or maybe even two and a half) await us.

The Florentine sardine that became a whale, and the restaurant that oozes nostalgia

This street was called Richbourg Street (Rich City) in the Middle Ages, because the Bièvre River passed through it, and the pastoral location attracted wealthy people who built their estates there.

However, in the 17th century, the tapestry factory, which I mentioned at the beginning of the article, along with the tanners and butchers, used the river water for their own needs and polluted it. As a result, the river, which flowed into the Seine, became smelly and dangerous to health, and eventually the municipality decided to build over it and turn it into an underground river.

The only mansion left from those days is the Hôtel Scipion, located at the intersection of Rue Fer à Moulin and Rue Scipion, number 13. The street and the building are named after Scipio Sardini (1526-1609), a banker from Tuscany who came to France with the Queen. Catherine de Medici.

Sardinia, who lent money to Catherine de Medici and the three who became kings (Francois II, Charles IX, and Henry III), became a very wealthy man and even married Isabelle de Limeuil (2-9), from the La Tour d'Auvergne family (the same family from which Catherine de Medici's mother came).

That Isabelle was part of Catherine de Medici’s “Flying Squadron” (Escadron Volant), and no, she didn’t serve in the air force… It was about 30 noblewomen, carefully selected by the queen and whose job was to spy on her enemies, by becoming their mistresses. They got their name from the fact that when they followed the queen, their dresses hid their legs and it looked as if they were floating above the floor.

Isabelle married Lord Scipio Sardinia, after “ending her service” following an unplanned pregnancy with the Prince de Condé, brother of Antoine de Bourbon, father of King Henry IV. The two couples lived in harmony and died at a very old age, relative to the period.

The success of the Sardine gentleman was not well received by the French nobility, who said of him, “Once he was a sardine, now he is a great whale. Thus France "Nuts her fish." Sardinian chided them and continued to lend money to the kings of France, and eventually he bought himself the estate you see now in 1565, and even expanded it.

After Scipio Sardinia's death, the mansion passed from hand to hand, until it became the bakery of the Salpêtrière Hospital, in the 13th arrondissement. The bakery operated there until 1975, and since then the place has changed its purpose again. I wanted to visit there in November 2023, but unfortunately the place has undergone significant renovation, on its way to becoming a center for students. Because of the renovation, I was unable to take a photo of the building itself, but I took a photo of a sign on the renovation site that will show you what the building will look like when the renovations are complete.

Right across from the palace is a cute little garden, and if you enter it you can see a relief there that describes how bread was baked in the building next door, for the hospital.

Right across from the garden, on the other side of the street, you will find a charming restaurant called Le Refuge du Passé, and as its name suggests – from the moment you enter, it is as if you have gone back in time many decades.

I had dinner there with Shuki Spector and my parents, and we really enjoyed it. It's classic French folk food, which won't earn the restaurant owners a Michelin star, but everything was fresh and delicious. The only "heartache" I had at the place was when it turned out that the cabbage soup stuffed with meat, which I really wanted to try, was out of stock. So I have no choice but to come back and visit the place again next time, so that I can try it (and maybe by then they'll have finished renovating the Sedirini mansion and the joy will be doubled).

The Refuge of the Past

32 Rue du Fer à Moulin

Link to the restaurant website

The Napoleonic Society and the Ice Cream That Surprised Me

Continue walking along Rue Fer à Moulin until you reach the intersection with Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire and turn right. There, at number 7, you will find the Napoleonic Society, which you can recognize by the pictures of Napoleon I and Napoleon III hanging on the wall.

The World Napoleonic Society was created during the 20th century by talk-crazy people, and it deals with giving lectures on the period and organizing annual congresses, which take place each time in a different place. In the late 20s, the Israeli branch of the society was established by the late Professor Mordechai Gihon and Alon Klibanov, who currently serves as president of the Israeli Center for the Heritage of Napoleon and His Era.

Several years ago I was asked to serve as the secretary of the association (on a voluntary basis) and I am pleased to organize a series of fascinating lectures each year, which deal not only with military history but also with culinary, literary and artistic history. This is my opportunity to invite you to join us. To the website of the Napoleonic Heritage Center, to sign up for the mailing list and see which lectures are coming up. If you are interested in watching lectures that have taken place in the past, you are invited toNapoleon page on my website.

And here, next to the Napoleonic Society building, is a charming 18th-century building. No, it wasn't the mansion of anyone important, but... a horse market!

Originally the market was held on the famous Rue Sainte-Honoré, but during the 17th century it moved to the suburbs. Paris And in 1760, under the orders of Sartine (Antoine de Sartine 1729-1801), the building you are looking at now was built. In this building, the merchants bargained, bought and sold, while the horses themselves were kept in a yard nearby, which has since disappeared. Fans of “Les Miserables” may remember that the place was mentioned by Victor Hugo As one of the places the heroes passed through on their escape from the policeman Javert.

Retrace your steps on Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire until you reach number 19. There you will find an excellent ice cream called Glazed, with surprising flavors. For example: you will find mango ice cream with hot pepper (Piment d'Espelette) or berry and sumac ice cream, which I had and enjoyed very much.

Link to the ice cream parlor's website

The street that gave its name to one of my favorite cakes in Paris

Continue on Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire until you reach the intersection with Rue Cesnier. If you continue straight, you will reach the Jardin des Plantes, a botanical garden founded during the reign of Louis XIII to study medicinal plants, and now houses the Museum of Evolution, which is especially recommended for children.

I promise you an article about the botanical garden sometime in the future, but for now turn left onto Rue Censier. In the Middle Ages it was a dead-end street or in French Rue sans chief. Over the years, the street lengthened and its name was corrupted to become Censier. Nothing you see on the street will suggest to you that this area was home to several magnificent mansions during the 15th century, one of which belonged to Isabeau de Bavière (1370-1435), wife of King Charles VI (reigned 6-1380).

Later, an orphanage was built here in 1624 and stood where buildings 21-25 are now. This orphanage operated until French Revolution And later it became a place where leather was processed, until that place was also closed, the complex was demolished, and new buildings were built (some of which, as you will see during your walk, are particularly ugly).

You're probably asking yourself why I'm taking you down this street today. You'll get the answer when you reach number 51, where you'll discover Carl Marletti's patisserie.

Marletti worked as a pastry chef at several important culinary institutions, including the Café de la Paix, located right next to Opéra GarnierIn 2007, he decided to go independent and opened his own patisserie shop here and began selling desserts, which brought him worldwide fame among all lovers of sweets.

If you listen to me, order the Censier cake, which is made of 65% cocoa chocolate (and 100% heaven of flavors) and take it to the nearby garden. Sit down, close your eyes and eat the cake. There is no doubt that you will immediately come to the conclusion that life is beautiful.

The crazy dance of the Saint-Madre church

If you did what I recommended and went to the park, sat on a bench and ate a chocolate cake, you will surely be happy to know that you are sitting in a cemetery right now. Don't worry, this cemetery was closed several centuries ago and turned into a blooming garden where children are brought, but here in this garden an affair took place that almost endangered the monarchy in 18th-century Paris.

As you can see, right next to the garden is the church of Saint Medard, whose current structure dates back to the 15th century. It was the church of the village of Saint Medard, which, together with Saint Marcel, was one of the suburbs of Paris that bordered it during the Middle Ages, before being swallowed up like a Cezanne cake.

In the 18th century, a man named François de Pâris (1690-1727) served in the church. François came from a noble family, but decided to turn to an ecclesiastical career and lived the life of a martyr (by himself), when, despite his good financial situation, he ate only one meal a day, wore a shirt made of hard and prickly cloth, in order to torture himself, and the rest of the time knitted socks for the poor.

It is not surprising that this longevity shortened his life significantly, and he died on May 1, 1727 and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Madre. Shortly thereafter, rumors began to spread that people who ate the dirt near his grave were cured of various diseases, and a phenomenon began to emerge of people coming to the grave and having convulsions and losing their sanity (but, they claimed, at least regaining their physical health).

At first, the authorities treated this phenomenon with humor mixed with contempt, but as more and more people came to the tomb and began to dance and contort, the government began to worry that the phenomenon could lead to a serious violation of public order. And so one day, an invisible hand stuck a sign on the church of Saint-Madre that read, “In the name of the king, God is forbidden to perform miracles here,” and indeed a miracle happened, and then the miracles stopped.

You can encounter the remnants of those cemetery dances every Sunday at 11:00 AM, in the square next to the Saint-Madre Church. If you arrive on time, you can see people gathering there singing and dancing. If you've never seen this open-air chanson show, then it's definitely worth planning your trip so that you get there on Sunday at the designated time.

Whether you danced and sang or not, it's definitely worth entering the Church of Saint-Madre, where you can find works of art from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and if you arrive on the first day, you can also listen to the mass that takes place there.

After you exit the church, pay attention to the building in front of you. To my surprise, I learned that despite the “Renaissance” theme of forest animals and vegetation, the mural was actually created in 1929 by the Italian painter Eldi Gueri.

Rue Moffatt – It used to be much more dangerous to walk in Paris

One of the questions I get asked all the time is whether it’s safe to travel in Paris. This question is based on a naive thought, as if Paris was once a quiet and pastoral city and only in recent decades, with the immigration of “cousins” from North Africa and the Middle East, has Paris become a dangerous place. So let me shatter this illusion and prove to you that 100 years ago or more, Paris was much more dangerous than it is today.

There's nothing like Rue Mouffetard, where you're now, to prove it. Today, it's one of the most touristy streets in Paris, thanks to the food shops on its lower side and the restaurants (most of which are tourist traps) that you encounter as you climb up. But if you'd visited it in the more distant past, chances are you wouldn't have made it to the end in one piece.

The street's name is derived from the word Mouffette, which means "skunk" in Hebrew. The street received this name because of the strong stench that has characterized it since the 17th century. The source of the stench is the Beaver River, which I mentioned at the beginning of the station, which was poisoned mainly by tanners and carpet industry workers, who poured dangerous chemicals into it (not to mention the corpses of animals).

If the smell in the street didn’t kill you, you would certainly have been killed by a stray bullet if you had visited there in 1848 or 1871, when barricades were erected on the street and blood flowed down the street like the waters of a stinking river. You survived all this, at the top of the street, near the Place de la Contrescarpe, about which I will write later, there roamed a dangerous gang called “Les Apaches”, who used to strangle their victims, stab them and steal their money.

So when do you think it would be better to visit Paris? Today or then?!

Now that we've finished telling the story of the street and thank God we're living in the 21st century and not the 19th, let's start climbing the hill. Continue until you reach the intersection with rue d'Arbalete, and turn right until you reach a small garden named after the Jewish doctor Bernard Halpern (1904-1978).

I brought you here not only because of the story or because of the extraordinary beauty of the garden, but because from here you can photograph the bell tower of Saint-Madre and with a little luck, as I had, you can get a truly sublime Parisian photograph.

Further on, at number 69, you will see an 18th-century house, which was used as a meeting place for revolutionaries during the 19th century, while at number 61, you will find a monastery that became a base for the Republican Guard during the Franco-Prussian War.

Between George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway

Continue up Rue Moffattre until you reach the intersection with Rue Pot de Fer. Go to building number 6, where the writer George Orwell (Georges Orwell 1903-1950), who became famous for his book “1984” lived. Another book, not so well known in Israel, is “Dirty and Dirty in Paris and London,” where he describes in detail the terrible life of kitchen workers in the most luxurious restaurants in Paris in the 30s.

Retrace your steps to Rue Moffattre, and continue up until you reach the Contrescarpe square, built in 1852. The name comes from the wall of Philippe Auguste that passed right next to it (you will soon be able to see parts of it). The medieval fortifications that were surrounded by a moat had two parts: the Scarpe, the inner part, and the Contrescarpe, which is the outer part, and the square is named after that outer part of the moat.

When the wall of Philip Augustus existed, there was a gate here, with the “interesting” name – “Gate of the Brothels” (Porte Bordelles). Later, after the wall of Philip Augustus was demolished in favor of the wall of King Charles V (reigned from 5-1364), the area became very lively thanks to a series of inns that were established there, one of which became legendary.

I am of course talking about La Maison de la Pomme de Pin (The House of the Pinecone), which was already mentioned in the books of Rabelais (François Rabelais 1483-1543), but gained its fame thanks to being the meeting place of “La Pléiade”, a group of 7 poets, led by Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585). This group was of great importance in the history of poetry in France because its main goal was to prove that French was a suitable language for writing poetry, and it did succeed in this. By the way, if you want to read one of Ronsard’s poems, you can find his “Poem of Helen” in the article on Chateau de Brissac.

Today, an inscription with the name of the inn can be found on house number 1, but this is not where the mythical inn stood, as it stood at the intersection of Moffatar Street and Blainville Street.

Anyone who has read the book “A Traveling Feast” knows this house well, with its small rooms (but with a great view), lack of hot water and of course the bathroom in the hallway that was nothing more than a hole in the ground. I wonder what it’s like to live there today? I’ll leave you to guess the answer to the question, but I’ll just say that if you’re looking for a walking tour following Ernest Hemingway in Paris, you can find it atThis article.

Continue on until you reach the intersection with Clovis Street, named after the first king of the French (or rather, Franks). If you turn right and look to your left, you can see a small surviving section of Philip Augustus' wall, built between 1190 and 1213.

How do you say strip club in Latin?

After you have glimpsed what remains of the wall of Philippe Auguste, you are invited to go down the Rue Carinal Lemoine, until the intersection with Rue Monge. Turn right and walk to number 49 and go inside. Welcome! You have arrived at the Arenas of Lutèce (Arènes de Lutèce).

These arenas were preserved for nearly 2000 years, until they were rediscovered in the 19th century, when the Rue Monge was being built. Here in these arenas, not only tournaments were held in which gladiators killed each other, or fought against wild animals, but also performances by dancers and acrobats, called in Latin Ludus.

This is where our journey ends, but before we end, I want to tell you an interesting story. It turns out that just as we had Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who revived the Hebrew language, there is a bishop in the Vatican whose job is to keep the Latin language alive and current. During his work, he receives requests to invent words in Latin to describe modern concepts such as electricity or computer, and just like Eliezer Ben Yehuda, he thinks about it, invents the word, and puts it in the Latin dictionary.

One day he was asked to come up with a Latin word to describe a strip club. That bishop sat and thought and then remembered those ludus, who danced for them in the various arenas throughout the Roman Empire. So, if at your next gathering of friends you want to show off your extensive knowledge of Latin, all you have to say is that according to the “Vatican Latin Revival,” a strip club in Latin is Ludus Nudus!

More information about the Latin Quarter

If you liked this itinerary and are interested in exploring other places in the Latin Quarter, I recommend you visitPage about the Latin Quarter On my website and find not only travel itineraries but also recommendations for hotels, apartments, restaurants and lots of practical information that will help you build the perfect trip.