5th arrondissement

Highlights: Quartier latin · Sorbonne-Panthéon · Mouffetard · Jardin des Plantes · Val-de-Grâce · Saint-Victor

On the left bank of the Seine, where Lutèce came into being two thousand years ago, the 5th arrondissement still bears the name its students gave it in the Middle Ages: the Quartier latin. Here, every stone tells a lesson of history, from the Gallo-Roman arenas to the lecture halls of the Sorbonne, from the Panthéon to the steep lanes of the montagne Sainte-Geneviève. A quarter where intelligence, faith and the sweetness of life have always answered one another.

Lutèce, on the slopes of the left bank

When the Parisii, a Gaulish people settled on the Île de la Cité, extended their city towards the left bank, the Romans built there, after the conquest of Gaul, Lutetia: a grid of streets ordered around a forum, on the slopes of what would become the montagne Sainte-Geneviève. The ancient city today leaves two remarkable witnesses. The arènes de Lutèce, a 1st-century amphitheatre able to hold several thousand spectators for gladiator combats and theatrical performances, and the northern thermal baths, vast public baths of the 2nd and 3rd centuries whose remains today support the hôtel de Cluny, become the musée national du Moyen Âge. The rue Mouffetard, for its part, still follows the line of a former Roman road leading towards Lyon and Italy, a sign that the great traffic routes of today sometimes trace the same lines as those of Antiquity.

The mountain of knowledge

In the 5th century, Geneviève, a young pious woman, is said to have reassured the Parisians alarmed by the threat of Attila and would become the patron saint of the city. Her burial place, on the hill that now bears her name, drew pilgrims and builders: an abbey, then the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, preserve her memory and still house her reliquary today. It was on this same mountain of knowledge that in 1257, under the reign of Saint Louis, the theologian Robert de Sorbon founded a college intended for poor students of theology. The name of Sorbonne soon attached itself to the whole university of Paris, which shone throughout medieval Europe and drew masters and scholars from every kingdom. These students, coming from lands so diverse that they had nothing in common but Latin, gave the quarter the nickname that would never leave it: the Quartier latin.

From the Val-de-Grâce to the Panthéon

The taste for knowledge and piety continued to shape the landscape of the quarter until the Grand Siècle. In 1645, the queen Anne d'Autriche laid the first stone of the Val-de-Grâce, in thanksgiving for the long-awaited birth of the future Louis XIV; the church, designed by François Mansart and then completed by Jacques Lemercier and Pierre Le Muet, unfolds one of the finest Baroque domes in the capital. A century later, Louis XV, cured of a serious illness, in turn vowed to raise a sanctuary to sainte Geneviève: the architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot began its construction in 1758, on the plans of a bold neoclassical church. The edifice, completed in 1790, was secularised as early as 1791 to become the Panthéon, destined to receive the ashes of the great men of the nation, from Voltaire to Rousseau.

The same scientific effervescence reached the Jardin du Roi, created in 1626 by Guy de La Brosse as a garden of medicinal plants for the training of apothecaries: the Revolution made it, in 1793, the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, open to all those curious about the natural sciences. Its menagerie, opened the following year, is today among the oldest in Europe still in operation.

The 19th century, between new roads and rediscoveries

The 19th century both upheaved and revealed the face of the quarter. The great Haussmannian thoroughfares traced the boulevard Saint-Michel and redrew certain blocks, while the rue Mouffetard proudly kept its medieval line and its market. In 1869, the digging of the rue Monge brought to light the arènes de Lutèce, forgotten for centuries beneath the fill. Threatened with disappearance under the pickaxes of the developers, they were saved thanks to the mobilisation of Victor Hugo and other defenders of Parisian heritage, before being laid out as a public square at the end of the century. The quarter, however, never ceased to be faithful to its primary vocation: prestigious lycées, grandes écoles and faculties multiplied there, making the Sorbonne, a century later, one of the hearths of the student movement of May 1968, whose echo still resonates in the collective memory.

Living today in the Quartier latin

Today, the 5th arrondissement gracefully combines scholarly memory and the art of living. The rue Mouffetard unfurls its stalls and terraces up to the place de la Contrescarpe, the Jardin des Plantes offers its setting of greenery and its century-old greenhouses, and the antiquarian bookshops sit alongside the secret gardens of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. The banks of the Seine, the quays lined with bouquinistes and the tranquil squares compose a setting where study rubs shoulders with leisurely strolling. Between dressed stone, hôtels particuliers and views over the rooftops of Paris, to live in the Quartier latin is to choose an art of living where history becomes a discreet presence, and where every street continues to invite both thought and the simple pleasure of being at home.