6th arrondissement

Highlights: Saint-Germain-des-Prés · Odéon · Luxembourg · Saint-Sulpice · Monnaie de Paris

At the heart of the rive gauche, the 6th arrondissement owes its character to a rare history: that of an abbey turned village, of a royal garden opened to all, and of a neighbourhood where thinkers, publishers and artists have shaped, century after century, an art of living unlike any other. Here, every cobbled street has a story to tell.

In the beginning, the abbey and the village

It all began in the 6th century, when the Merovingian king Childebert I founded, in 543, an abbey on the banks of the Seine to house relics brought back from Spain. Consecrated first to Saint Vincent and then to Saint Germain, bishop of Paris, this royal abbey became a major spiritual and intellectual centre, with its own township, its moats and its fair. Long distinct from Paris intra-muros, Saint-Germain-des-Prés grew as a small autonomous town, paced by the bells of its abbey church, whose Romanesque tower, still visible today, ranks among the oldest monuments in the capital.

The famous foire Saint-Germain, established in the Middle Ages, drew merchants and onlookers for weeks each spring, on the present site of the covered market Saint-Germain. This taste for lively commerce and popular gatherings would never truly leave the neighbourhood, which still today keeps that rhythm of local life, among small shops, terraces and narrow streets inherited from this ancient fabric.

The golden age of classical heritage

The 17th century transformed the face of the neighbourhood. In 1615, Queen Marie de Médicis entrusted the architect Salomon de Brosse with the construction of a palace inspired by the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, completed in 1631: the palais du Luxembourg, surrounded by a vast formal garden that would become one of the most beloved green spaces in Paris. Since 1799, the palace has housed the Sénat, while the garden remains a place of promenade dear to Parisians of all ages.

Nearby, the Institut de France, crowned with its dome designed by Louis Le Vau, rose from 1662 thanks to the bequest of Cardinal Mazarin, facing the Louvre on the other side of the Seine. The Monnaie de Paris, established on the quai de Conti since 1775 in a neoclassical building by Jacques-Denis Antoine, and the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, which from the 19th century brought together the collections and studios that trained French artists, complete the making of the 6th as an arrondissement of learning and creation, where the architecture itself tells of the intellectual ambition of the place.

A crucible of ideas, from the Enlightenment to the Revolution

Opened in 1686 on the rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain, now the rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie, the Café Procope is considered the oldest café in Paris still in business. Voltaire, Diderot and the encyclopédistes gathered there in the following century, making the neighbourhood a natural crossroads for new ideas. This vocation was confirmed in 1782 with the inauguration of the théâtre de l'Odéon, the new home of the Comédie-Française, designed by Charles De Wailly and Marie-Joseph Peyre, which gave its name to the whole surrounding neighbourhood.

A few years later, this same area, around the district des Cordeliers, became one of the crucibles of revolutionary agitation, before the 19th century durably established the book trades in the neighbourhood: printers, booksellers and, later, the great publishing houses that still today make the reputation of Saint-Germain-des-Prés as the capital of French publishing.

The post-war years and the existentialist ferment

It was in the 20th century that Saint-Germain-des-Prés acquired its best-known legend. In the 1940s and 1950s, the cafés Les Deux Magots and the Café de Flore, on the place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, along with the Brasserie Lipp, became the headquarters of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, who wrote, debated and forged there a part of existentialist thought. In the nearby cellars, such as that of the Tabou, the post-war youth invented a new way of life to the sound of jazz, carried by figures such as Boris Vian and Juliette Gréco.

This intellectual and artistic ferment definitively established the 6th arrondissement as a place where café life is never trivial: here one remakes the world as much as one observes the life of the neighbourhood, a tradition that has crossed the decades without ever truly fading.

Today, the elegance of a living neighbourhood

The 6th arrondissement has managed to preserve this subtle balance between memory and everyday life. Around the marché Saint-Germain, the art galleries of the rue de Seine and the independent bookshops that remain the pride of the neighbourhood, residents, Beaux-Arts students and art lovers from around the world live side by side today. The jardin du Luxembourg still welcomes strollers, chess players and children near the great pond, in an atmosphere unchanged for generations.

To live in the 6th is to choose an art of living where history is not merely visited: it is crossed each day, among ancient stone, lively terraces and the knowing silence of the little streets. A neighbourhood of character, in the truest sense of the word.