The Latin Quarter is undoubtedly one of the places with the longest history in Paris. A historical journey through this district will begin with the cheerful days of Lutetia, when the combination of Christians and lions was the ultimate reality show with 90% ratings. It will continue with the days when the place became an intellectual arena with the creation of the university (which gave the place its name) and end with the student uprising of 1968, which expelled a significant part of the faculties from Paris itself.
In short, we are dealing with more than 2,000 years of long and fascinating history, and since most of you don't have enough time to read the many hundreds of books written about the events that took place there, I decided to tell you the story of this magical and fascinating quarter, in order to upgrade your trip there.
The joyful days of Lutetia
It is true that Paris was created as a fishing village where the Bercy district is today, but apart from the remains of a few fishing boats, which were found inCarnival Museum, not a trace remains of this village.
The real story of Paris begins in the Gallic period, when a tribe called the Parisii founded a small settlement on the Ile de la Cité (and possibly also in the Nanterre area). In 52 AD, the Romans conquered the Gallic settlement and decided to build a magnificent Roman city on a hill on the left bank of the Seine.
Why did the Romans decide to establish the settlement on a hill (which would later become Saint Genevieve Hill, where thePantheon)? Firstly, because it is easier to defend a settlement located on a hilltop and secondly, in order to cope with the frequent floods of the Seine, which created marshes on the right bank, which gave their name toMarais District (Marais means “marsh” in French).
It was a “bookish” Roman city, with two-and-a-half streets, baths, markets, and of course an amphitheater. The main street (Cardo Maximus), was where Saint Jacques Street is today and it crossed the city from north to south. Another main street was paved more or less along the route of Boulevard Saint Michel.
The Roman settlement in Lutzia reached its peak in the late 2nd century AD, and a number of remains remain, which can still be seen today, the most important of which are the bathhouses in the complex. Cluny Museum (Hôtel de Cluny) and the amphitheater located on Rue Monge, called Arènes de Lutèce.
Invasions by Germanic tribes during the 3rd century led the population to concentrate on the Île de la Cité, and the city of Lutsia gradually fell into ruin over the following centuries, until it became a distant memory (for example, the amphitheater disappeared completely and became a kind of legend, until it was discovered by chance during the paving of the Rue Monge).
During the 5th century, Attila the Hun arrived in the area, along with his army, and laid siege to the city. Everyone was sure that this was the end of the city, but a noblewoman from Nanterre named Genevieve promised that the city would not be conquered, and indeed a miracle happened and the Hun army decided to help Lutetia and go and plunder Orléans (there is a rumor that the reason for this was a rumor that spread in the Hun camp that Lutetia's women were ugly and therefore not worth the effort of conquest, plunder, and rape).
Lutetia may have managed to get rid of one potential conqueror, but it was unable to maintain its independence for long, as a few decades after the Huns' visit, a Germanic tribe called the Franks arrived in the region, and they easily conquered what is now France And Belgium.
The Frankish leader Clovis established his residence in Lotzia, now renamed “Paris,” after the Parisian tribe that founded the city. He was greatly impressed by Genevieve, whom he and his wife Clotilde managed to persuade to convert to Christianity. One of the results of Clovis’s conversion (who became King Clovis I) was the establishment of a monastery on the hilltop on the left bank, and he did so with excellent timing, as he died shortly after the monastery was founded, just in time to have his remains placed in the monastery’s crypt.
Genevieve probably died about a year later, and because she managed to save the city from the Huns and convert Clovis, she quickly received the title of “saint” and even became the patron saint of Paris (along with Saint Denis). She was buried in the same monastery as Clovis and gave her name to the hill on which the monastery was built (Montagne Sainte-Geneviève).
In the 7th century, Saint-Éloi, a goldsmith by trade, created a kind of golden box inlaid with precious stones, into which the relics of Saint Genevieve were placed. These relics were housed in a monastery on the top of the hill, and whenever a calamity struck Paris (war, plague, etc.), these relics were taken out of the monastery and paraded through Paris. All this ended during the French Revolution, when the relics of Saint Genevieve were burned in the square near theHotel de Ville, while the box was melted.
The monastery where Saint Genevieve was buried is also no more, and all that remains is a bell tower that is now in the courtyard of the prestigious school named after King Henry IV (reigned between 4-1589).
The intellectual bread oven of the Latin world
After a few centuries, during the 9th century, the Vikings appeared at the gates of Paris and the city's inhabitants were forced to move back to the Île de la Cité and abandon the Left Bank. After the expulsion of the Vikings and the rise to power of the House of Capa (who ruled France from 987 to 1328), the Right Bank began to develop and became the commercial center of Paris, but until the 13th century the Left Bank remained in ruins.
King Philip Augustus (reigned 1180-1223) decided in 1203 to begin colonizing the left bank of the Seine, and in order to strengthen the sense of security, he erected a new wall, which also surrounded part of the left bank (today a small part of it can be found on rue Clovis, not far from where it intersects with Rue Descartes.
The merchants of Paris were not so eager to move to the Left Bank, but the clergy were actually very happy to move there, especially after receiving free land from the king. In those years, there were 3 monasteries on the Left Bank, which had been established even earlier, but grew greatly during the reign of Philip Augustus and his successors.
The first is Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, located in what is now the 6th arrondissement. The second was the Abbey of Sainte-Genevieve, which we have already discussed, while the third was the Abbey of Sainte-Victor, located at the bottom of the hill named after Sainte-Genevieve, not far from where Jussieu Square is today. Several members of this abbey became very famous theological lecturers during the Middle Ages.
It is not surprising that higher education in Paris began here, as the clergy were almost the only ones who could read and write and they needed to continue training people to become familiar with Christian theology and Latin (the language of Christian liturgy, at the time). Thus the quarter received its nickname, the “Latin Quarter,” after the language in which students were taught.
The first of the Saint-Victor monks to produce disciples was Gilduin (died 1155), followed by Pierre Abélard (1079-1142), known to us for his famous love story with Heloise (you are invited to read more about him). In the article by Danny Ashkenazi).
The monks initially taught on the street not far fromNotre Dame Cathedral, when the lecturers stood at a lectern while the students sat on piles of straw. These piles are called Fouarre in French, so it is not surprising that one of the streets on the Left Bank, very close to Notre Dame, is called Rue du Fouarre.
But don't think that this street, where Dante lived during his studies, was all about studying. Parisian students had a reputation for being wild, and when they weren't visiting the brothels in the area, they got drunk in the taverns of the Latin Quarter and then caused riots. That's why in 1358, the Regent Charles Duke Normandy (future King Charles V), decided to block the street with iron chains.
In the 13th century, a cleric named Robert, who came from the village of Sorbonne, appeared at the king's court. Despite coming from a simple family, his vast knowledge and conversational skills impressed the king so much that he insisted on having dinner with him almost every day.
In 1253, Robb decided to build a college, a building where students could live and study, and this college became the basis for the famous University of Paris, which bears his name. The university had a close relationship with the church, so it is not surprising that Pope Gregory IX (reigned 9-1227) said of the University of Paris that it was the oven in which the intellectual bread of the Latin world was baked.
This university has a fascinating and unexpected history, and since I have quite a bit more to write about the Latin Quarter, I will send those who want to know more to read the The article about the Sorbonne University, while we will move on.
Parallel to the Sorbonne, a long line of other colleges were created over the years, each of which usually belonged to a different country, which sent students and teachers to Paris. For example, in 1305 the Collège de Navarre was created by the wife of King Philip IV (reigned 4-1285), who came from the Kingdom of Navarre in the Pyrenees, and where students from there initially lived.
One of the most famous lecturers at the university was a gentleman named Albert, who came from what is now Germany. Over the years, his name was corrupted from Albert to Maubert, and a small square in the Latin Quarter (Place Maubert) is now named after him, where you can find a shop. Cheeses One of the best in Paris (Laurent Dubois) and a bakery that makes great croissants (according to foreign publications), called Maison d'Isabelle (somehow on every trip I want to get there, and on every trip I forget to do so).
The university reached its peak of influence at the beginning of the Hundred Years' War, but then its position began to weaken. This was because it supported the English, who even conquered Paris and ruled it for a period, and the French kings never forgot it.
This is why King Francis I (reigned 1-1515) decided to establish a competing educational institution in 1547 called the College of France (Collège de France). This institution taught not only Latin but also French and… Hebrew! In addition to sacred studies, secular studies could also be studied there in the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, which the king so admired.
From this institution, where education was free (and is still free today), came some of France's greatest researchers, including the physicist Ampère (André-Marie Ampère 1775-1836) and the man who deciphered the language of glyphs, namely Champollion (Jean-François Champollion 1790-1832), about whom you can read inThis article.
About a century later, during the reign of King Louis XIII (reigned 13-1610), another competing research institution was established to rival the university, the Botanical Gardens, which are still located on the eastern border of the 1643th arrondissement. The purpose of the gardens was to research the medicinal properties of various plants, and one of the first directors of the institution was none other than Dr. Pagon, who managed to eliminate almost the entire family of Louis XIV thanks to his “medicine.”
The university leaves Paris
The French Revolution destroyed the monasteries, which, as mentioned, were the basis from which the university grew, but they also created a new type of higher education institution called the “Grandes écoles,” where the French elite still study to this day.
The most famous large school is the “Higher Normal School” or in French, École normale supérieure, which was created in 1794 to train teachers and during the 20th century became a place where future leaders were trained (a significant number of French presidents, politicians and high-ranking officials studied there, alongside famous intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre).
The second famous school was created by Napoleon and is called École Polytechnique, which aims to train the future generation of technical officers and engineers. This school, built on the ruins of the College of Navarre, produced quite a few famous scientists, including the physicist Ampère, the mathematician Gaspard Monge (1746-1818) and even one French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
These institutions continued to operate together with the various faculties of the university within Paris itself, until 1968 – then the famous student uprising broke out. I will not detail the reasons for the uprising and its course here, because that alone is worth a separate article, but after months of street fighting and anarchism, during which Charles de Gaulle fled France, the uprising calmed down.
This uprising had two main consequences for Paris itself. First, the curbstones, which paved a large part of its streets, were replaced by the municipality with asphalt, in order to prevent students from removing these stones in the future and throwing them at the police (as they did during the uprising).
The second result was the decision to move a significant portion of the Sorbonne's faculties out of Paris, to rather unsightly campuses in the suburbs. Along with these faculties, the École Polytechnique also moved to the suburb of Palaiseau, southwest of Paris, in the 70s.
At the same time, the Latin Quarter underwent gentrification and became a desirable district. Gone are the days when the Place Maubert was considered, according to the famous Renaissance man Erasmus (Desiderius Erasmus 1468-1536), the cesspool of Paris.
Gone are the days when Rue Mouffetard was considered a neighborhood where people like the writer George Orwell lived in abject poverty, and in Place de Contrescarpe, gangs of “Apache” roamed, ready to strangle and stab you for a few francs (and you still think that today’s Paris is dangerous…).
Instead, intellectuals and politicians moved to the Latin Quarter (President Mitterrand had a house on Rue Bièvre), who live both in the Haussmannian buildings, built in the 19th century, and in much older buildings that they renovated. Gentrification, which led to an economic, culinary, and cultural boom, made the Latin Quarter one of the most desirable in Paris and therefore also one of the most expensive.
Today, the Latin Quarter has become one of the most sought-after districts by tourists, both because of its central location and because of the number of cafes and places to hang out there. If you too have decided to live there, or at least travel around the area, I recommend that you visit the page Latin Quarter Tourist Information And find all the information you need there.
