The History of Saint-Germain-des-Prés – From an Ancient Monastery to the Church of Reason

Saint Germain des Prés (or Saint Germain des Prés in French) is undoubtedly the most mythical neighborhood of Paris and as such is also considered a favorite of tourists (in every survey I have done, the area has always won first place in the question “Where would you like to live in Paris?”). And the truth is that there are quite a few good reasons for this, starting from the central location (not far fromLuxembourg Gardens and the Latin Quarter on one side and the Seine and the Right Bank on the other) to the lively atmosphere in the place thanks to the cafes, galleries, and more.

I am of course not disparaging all the factors that make the Saint-Germain area so beloved by tourists, but the main reason why I return there every time is precisely because of the history (well, I'm sure this statement didn't really surprise my loyal readers 🙂).

So today I want to take you on a journey through time and tell you about the fascinating history of this neighborhood. We will start with the monastery that grew there, essentially becoming a city within a city, and we will end, of course, with the intellectuals who sat in the cafes not far from the famous church and turned the neighborhood into a kind of “church of reason.”

Of course, I didn't forget all those who are currently planning their trip to Paris, and especially for you, I included important information at the end of the article, such as recommended restaurants in the area, hiking trails, and more.

So let's put on an intellectual look and get going!

The history of Saint-Germain-des-Prés

There used to be fields here.

Our story begins in the 6th century AD, when King Childebert I (reigned 1-511) decided to go to war against the Visigoths and invaded the Iberian Peninsula. During the war, he besieged the city of Zaragoza and the city's dignitaries offered him a deal. He would lift the siege of the city and they would give him the vestments of Saint Vincent, who was the city's first bishop and ended his life as a human steak on the Roman grill.

When the king returned to Paris, he decided to build a church in honor of Saint Vincent where his priestly vestments would be displayed (just as King Louis IX would do when he founded theSainte Chapelle (about 700 years later). In 558, the construction of the Church of Saint-Vincent was completed, just in time to receive the body of King Childebert I who died that year.

Thus the church became the first royal mausoleum of France until the basilica Saint Denis replaced her in this role in the 7th century AD. The church, built by Childeber, was one of the most beautiful and impressive of ParisAccording to the scriptures, it had mosaics made by the greatest artists of the period and a gold-plated roof, which was visible from afar.

The person who consecrated the church and was also responsible for the burial of Childebert I was Germain, Bishop of Paris, who later became a saint. The reasons for receiving the coveted title were:

• His attempts to prevent bloodshed among the heirs of Schilder I's brother, King Clotaire I (reigned 1-1)
• Quite a few miracles were attributed to him, foremost among them his first miracle, which he performed inside his mother's womb, when he managed to convince her not to have an abortion.

When Germain, Bishop of Paris, died in 576, he was buried in the church (a plaque can be found in the church noting this) and following his canonization, it was decided during the 11th century to change the name of the church from Saint-Vincent to Saint-Germain. You will probably ask why the church is called Saint-Germain-des-Prés Or in Hebrew, Saint-Germain in the fields? Where are the fields in question? After all, there are only houses, boulevards and cafes around today.

The reason why the place was called Saint-Germain-en-Laye is because the church and the monastery, which was founded with it, were located outside the city walls near vegetable and fruit fields that the monks cultivated. To these fields were also added vines, which provided excellent wine, which is not so surprising since Saint Vincent was the patron saint of grape growers and winemakers.

The fields and vines existed for many centuries and were considered very fertile, because, as inMarais The lands of Saint-Germain were also once marshlands and as such were very fertile. What happened to them and why are they no longer with us? We will learn that later.

A city within a city

Placing a monastery and church in the middle of green fields and outside the crowded city walls may be a good idea for its pastoral appeal, but it is certainly not wise when the Vikings are rampaging through the area. They came to Paris several times during the 9th century, and during one of their invasions, they looted the monastery and burned the church.

During the 11th century, the church and monastery were rebuilt and consecrated in 1163 by Pope Alexander III (reigned 3–1159). This is the church we know today and is considered the third oldest in Paris. The two oldest churches are Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre inFifth District which is right in front of Notre Dame Church, and the Church of Saint Pierre, which can be found on the summit of Montmartre, not far from the Sacré-Cère.

The fertile fields made the monastery very rich and independent, and it gradually became a kind of city within a city. To protect itself from possible invasions, such as those of the Vikings, the abbots collaborated with King Philip II and built a stone wall as well as the Tour de Nesle on the Seine River (opposite theLouvre).

This tower has a fascinating story, but since we still have a long way to go together in the history of Saint-Germain, I will not write it here. If you would like to know this story, you can do so through the article by Dr. Orna Lieberman. The Migdal Nell Affair: Acts of Adultery in the Royal Court.

The Saint-Germain Fair and the Birth of the Cafés

As mentioned, for many centuries the monastery maintained its independence, to the point that the abbot could afford not to allow the Bishop of Paris to participate in the inauguration ceremony of the new Saint-Germain Church, so that the abbot would know his place. As the monastery developed, new institutions were added, such as a prison, a courthouse, and even a gallows, so that the residents of the district would know their place.

Of all these institutions, the most important was the annual fair of the abbey, called in French the Foire Saint Germain. This fair was born in 1176 and was held for 3-5 weeks during the Easter period. Initially, the fair was held in temporary buildings, but in 1482 Louis XI (reigned 11-1461) decided to build stone buildings in their place, somewhat similar to the buildings built by Louis VI (reigned 1483-6) inLa God.

During the fair period, quite a few artisans and vendors came to the area, bringing goods from all over the world. You could find fabrics from Flanders, jewelry from Italy, and spices from the East. Alongside the merchants, there were quite a few acrobats and actors who were responsible for entertaining the visitors. These people essentially formed the basis of the French theater that began to take shape in the 17th century.

There was something almost democratic about this fair, as kings, nobles, and commoners rubbed shoulders with each other during it, and it was not uncommon to find the king among the stalls. France haggling over the price or watching a performance. Sometimes this ended badly financially. For example, we can learn from a letter written toDuke de Souley  That King Henry IV (reigned 4-1589) lost about 1610 pounds at the fair as a result of gambling. It was good, at least, that the king paid his debt from his personal money and not from the kingdom's budget...

In addition to the fair's contribution to the birth of theater, it also had a decisive contribution to the establishment of another important Parisian social institution. It all began in 1672 when two men named Pascal and Maliban, who had arrived in Paris from Armenia, brought with them a hot, fragrant black drink from the Middle East, which they tried to sell to fairgoers for 2.5 sous per glass.

This drink was called coffee, and although it was served hot, it initially had lukewarm success.

Thus, while some attributed medicinal properties to the drink, others claimed that it actually caused impotence. The exaggeration to say The Duchess of Orléans Who claimed that its smell reminded her of the breath of the Archbishop of Paris (and no, that was not a compliment).

One of the visitors to the fair was an Italian nobleman named Francesco Procopio dei Colteli. He tasted the bitter drink, fell in love with it, and decided to open an establishment where it could be served to the public in a seated setting and in a pleasant atmosphere. Thus was born in 1686 the first coffee house, called La Procope, named after the founder who quickly “brought” his name to France.

The place was located on the rue Fossés Saint Germain des Prés, where the Comédie-Française theater was also located. This old café is still on the same street today, although the name of the street changed over the years and became rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, thanks to the theater that was located there (the Comédie-Française moved through several buildings in Paris before arriving atPalais Royal(where it remains to this day).

As mentioned, Le Procop was the first café in Paris, and thanks to it, the drink became very popular. As a result, quite a few cafés sprang up during the 18th century, creating an entire drinking culture accompanied by political and philosophical debates. Some of these cafés became legendary during the 20th century, and we will talk about them later in the article. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We have a few more stories in store first.

The monastery is dead! Long live the boulevard!

The Abbey of Saint-Germain, thanks to the wealth it accumulated during the fair and thanks to agriculture, managed to maintain its autonomy until the 17th century and was considered the most important abbey in Paris. In 1586, the abbot, Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, built a palace that would be worthy of the abbot of such a rich and important abbey. Later, in 1691, Cardinal Guillaume-Egon de Fürstenberg (1629-1704) decided to upgrade the palace and decorate it with red and white bricks, which had previously been used in the Place Dauphin andPlace de Vosges.

The abbot's palace still exists today and can be seen from the outside on Rue de l'Abbaye, but the abbot's most important "legacy" is the Place Fürstenberg, adjacent to the palace, which was once used to store the cardinal's horses. This is not only the most romantic square, in my opinion, in Paris, but also the place where the Eugene Delacroix Museum, one of the most important painters of the 19th century. If you would like to get to know the square better, you are welcome to read the article Fürstenberg Square, the romantic square in the city of lights.

And so the Abbey of Saint-Germain continued to exist in splendor and splendor until the outbreak of French RevolutionBut just before we get to that bloody period, let me show you what they looked like. Saint-Germain-des-Prés and its immediate surroundings in 1789. We will do this using a video based on the computer game Assassin's Creed Unity, because a pretty good reconstruction of Paris at the time can be found there. As you will see, quite a bit has changed since then, and we will talk about that very soon.

In 1789, as mentioned, French Revolution And the Saint-Germain area becomes, together with the Palais Royal and the eastern districts of Paris, one of the greatest hotbeds of political extremism in the City of Lights. The reason for this was the printing houses, which were scattered throughout the district and where people like Marat and Danton printed journals that spread their extremist doctrine and incited against their political opponents.

The results of this incitement came in September 1792.

The leaders of the revolution decided to “cleanse” the prisons of Paris of political prisoners and allowed armed mobs to break into the prisons and massacre the prisoners. One of the largest prisons where quite a few political prisoners were held was that of the Abbey of Saint-Germain, where many dozens of prisoners were massacred, until all the surrounding streets turned red with blood.

During the 19th century, the area underwent a facelift that changed its appearance almost completely. Napoleon I began by demolishing the buildings of the old fair of the Abbey of Saint-Germain and building in their place the Saint-Germain covered market building, which still exists today at 1-4 rue Lobineau.

You will find quite a few great fruit, vegetable and cheese stalls in this covered market, so if you live in the area and love to cook, you are in for a treat (by the way, if you want to read about more markets in Paris, you are welcome to visitThis article).

However, the biggest change the area underwent was registered under the name of Napoleon I's nephew, Napoleon III (reigned 1-3). In order to solve the traffic problems in the area, it was decided to build the Boulevard Saint-Germain, which is familiar to all of us, and in order to do this, quite a few small, crowded alleys and parts of the monastery, including the prison, were demolished.

Work on the boulevard began during the reign of Napoleon III but was only completed in 3, just in time for the World's Fair that brought us the Eiffel TowerDuring these works, a plan was hatched to completely demolish the Church of Saint-Germain in order to widen the traffic route. Fortunately for us, Victor Hugo, who had previously saved the Notre Dame Church, came out against these plans and succeeded in saving the church for the benefit of future generations of Francophiles.

At the same time as the construction of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, it was decided to carve out another boulevard that would allow access from the Montparnasse train station to the left bank of the Seine. The result is Rue de Rennes, which starts at the train station but continues all the way to the Boulevard Saint-Germain. It is a wide and pleasant thoroughfare with quite a few shops, but I am very glad that it was ultimately decided not to continue it all the way to the Seine, because the small streets between the boulevard and the river have a unique charm.

The intellectuals are coming!

The streets around Boulevard Saint-Germain are considered very prestigious today and the prices of the hotels there are accordingly. However, what is interesting is that at the beginning of the 20th century, the Saint-Germain district was considered a relatively cheap place and most of its population belonged to the blue collar class.

This may be why Oscar Wilde, who suffered from poor health and an even poorer bank account, chose to live in this district for the last months of his life. He stayed in a cheap and depressing hotel called the Hôtel d'Alsace, where he died on November 30, 1900 (his last words are said to have been “I and the wallpaper on the walls are fighting a duel to the death. One of us will have to go”).

It is interesting to note that over the years this modest hotel has become a five-star hotel and changed its name to L'Hôtel. If you have the money, it is definitely recommended. To stay there And also visit the charming bar of the place.

So how did Saint-Germain, a poor quarter, become one of the most sought-after in Paris? In one word: intellectuals. These arrived in the neighborhood during the first half of the 20th century following the book publishers, who opened their offices there. But the institutions where most of the intellectual work took place were, of course, the cafés.

Since the days of Le Procop, which I wrote about earlier, the cafés have become a place where writers, poets and philosophers gathered to exchange ideas. The two most famous cafés in the district to this day are of course Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore.

Mago is the nickname for a statue of a Chinese sorcerer. In the 19th century, two such statues stood in a shop that imported silk from the East, and when the shop became a café in 1884, it kept these two statues and they are what gave the café its name. Since 1914, the café has been in the hands of the family of Auguste Boulay, who bought the establishment in 1914 and turned it into a “mecca” for intellectuals.

The painter Pablo Picasso, the surrealist writer André Breton (1896-1966), the poet Jacques Prévert (1900-1977) and many others, all of whom used to sit in the café and its famous terrace, which overlooks the church.

Speaking of Pablo Picasso, right next to the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church there is a small and charming garden called Square Laurent Prache. Inside the garden you will find a statue in memory of the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918). When the poet died as a result of the Spanish flu, Picasso, who was a good friend of his in the early 20th century, was asked to create a statue in his memory..

Picasso got lazy and instead of creating a statue that resembled Apollinaire's face, he simply gave the poet's memorial a head sculpture of Dora Maar, one of his famous lovers. This is exactly why Apollinaire's statue looks so feminine.

But let's get back to our story about the cafes of Saint-Germain. With the Nazi occupation of Paris in 1940, the Cafe de Mago became one of the favorite places for German army officers. As a result, intellectuals who opposed the occupation preferred to move to the nearby Cafe Flor.

One of the important intellectuals who turned Café Flor into a kind of office where he sat and wrote was Jean-Paul Sartre. The reason he chose the aforementioned café was the heater, which the café’s owner, Mr. Paul Boubal, had installed on the second floor. Thanks to this heater, Sartre and quite a few other intellectuals and artists were able to stay warm during the harsh winter of 1943-1944.

And so Sartre would arrive there every day, along with his partner Simone de Beauvoir. During the day, each of them would occupy a separate table and work quietly, hardly saying a word. In the evening, his friends would arrive, bringing with them the drinking and political debates.

After the end of World War II, the intellectuals’ cafés became a center of pilgrimage, and Sartre and Beauvoir became figures of almost religious importance. Quite a few people saw this phenomenon in a slightly ridiculous light and coined the nickname La Grande Sartreuse for Simone de Beauvoir. This is a play on the weight of the phrase La Grande Chartreuse, Chartreuse, which means “Sartre’s Holy Lady.”

However, it should be noted that the Café de Flor was a meeting place not only for intellectuals of a beautiful soul, but also for some of France's greatest anti-Semites. For example, in 1899, following the Dreyfus Affair, Charles Maurras (1868-1952) and Léon Daudet (1868-1942) founded the far-right movement l'Action Française here.

The movement's supporters were responsible for the anti-Semitic propaganda that swept France during the first half of the 20th century, and many collaborated with the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews of Paris. Moras was even tried for his crimes after the end of World War II and never set foot in this café again.

Why do Francophiles love Saint-Germain so much?

Today, both De Mago and Café de Flor are no longer a meeting place for intellectuals, they are just expensive cafes that are normally flooded with tourists. The magnificent monastery is largely gone and the intellectual atmosphere in Paris is also not what it once was. However, despite all this, the charm of Saint-Germain has not faded and Francophiles continue to return to this neighborhood at every opportunity.

So, what is the secret of this neighborhood's charm? It's not easy to answer this question briefly, so I've brought you some quotes from Francophiles who were asked to answer the question in the Facebook group. Paris and Ile-de-France:

• One of my favorite neighborhoods, the shops, cafes, restaurants, proximity to everywhere on foot… (Daniel Illoz)
• There's something in the air, in the small cafes, the slow movement, a pleasure (Aliza Guterman).
• I love the bookstores in the area, the old movie theaters that offer old, quality films from all over the world. Of course, the Luxembourg Gardens, whose atmosphere is still more charming than any other area in my opinion (Katya Popko-blog).
• I wouldn't trade the sixth district for the border of the fifth, because of the calm air, The Sorbonne, Luxembourg Gardens, the shops, the history, “Shampoo” Cinema And the population that hangs out there (Rachel Manor).
• I love this district because of the hotels with their interior gardens and blazing fireplaces –Rela Christine וD'Avoson, because of the Bossi food market, the alleys of Rue Christine and Dauphin, the ethnic furniture stores and galleries, the concerts at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church, the bistro Le Petit Francois, Paul's cafe, Eric Kaiser's bakery (Ronit Amir-Yaniv)

We hope that all of this, along with the fascinating history of the area, will convince you to return there on your next visit to Paris. If so, you are welcome to continue to the next part of the article, where you will find all the tourist information you need to enjoy everything the Saint-Germain district has to offer.

Saint Germain – Information for travelers

Did you enjoy reading about the history of the Saint-Germain Church and the neighborhood named after it? Are you ready to walk around the neighborhood and maybe even live there (despite the not-so-friendly prices there)?

All you have to do is enter the page Saint-Germain district On the site and find recommendations for hotels, apartments and restaurants, along with great hiking trails, that will help you discover all the secrets of the neighborhood.