Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Saint-Germain-des-Prés | |
---|---|
Neighbourhood | |
Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés | |
Coordinates: 48°51′14″N 2°20′04″E / 48.85389°N 2.33444°E | |
Country | France |
Region | Île-de-France |
City | Paris |
Arrondissement | 6th |
Population (1999) | |
• Total | 5,154 |
Saint-Germain-des-Prés (French pronunciation:
The quarter's cafés include
History
The Middle Ages
Until the 17th century the land where the quarter is located was prone to flooding from the Seine, and little building took place there; it was largely open fields, or prés, which gave the quarter its name.
The
The church and buildings of the Abbey were rebuilt in stone c. 1000 AD, and the Abbey developed into a major center of scholarship and learning. A village grew up around the Abbey, which had about six hundred inhabitants by the 12th century. The modern rue du Four is the site of the old ovens of the monastery, and the dining hall was located along the modern rue de l'Abbaye. A parish church, the church of Saint-Pierre, also was built on the left bank, at the site of the present Ukrainian catholic church; its parish covered most of the modern 6th and 7th arrondissements. The fortifications of King Philip Augustus (1180–1223), the first recorded walls to be built around the entire city, left Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés just outside the walls.
The Saint-Germain Fair
Beginning in the Middle Ages, Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés was not only a religious and cultural center, but also an important marketplace, thanks to its annual fair, which attracted merchants and vendors from all over Europe. The Foire Saint-Germain was already famous in 1176, when it allocated half of its profits to the King. The fair opened fifteen days after Easter, and lasted for three weeks. The dates and the sites varied over the years; beginning in 1482 it opened on 1 October and lasted eight days; in other years it opened 11 November or 2 February. Beginning in 1486, it was held in a portion of the gardens of the Hôtel de Navarre, close to the modern rue Mabillon. There were three hundred forty stalls at the fair of 1483; Special buildings were erected for the fair in 1512, which contained 516 stalls. The fair was also famous for the gambling, debauchery, and the riots that ensued when groups of rowdy students from the nearby university invaded the fair. The buildings burned on the night of 17–18 March 1762, but were quickly rebuilt. The fair continued annually until the Revolution in 1789, when it was closed down permanently.[2]
The Renaissance
At the end of the 16th century, Margaret of Valois (1553–1615) the estranged wife of King Henry IV of France but still officially Queen of France, decided to build a residence in the quarter, in lands belonging to the Abbey near the Seine just west of the modern rue de Seine, near the present Institut de France. She built a palace with extensive gardens and established herself as a patroness of literature and the arts, until her death in 1615.
17th–18th centuries: theatre and the first cafés
In 1673 the theatrical troupe in the city, the Comédie-Française, was expelled from its building on rue Saint‑Honoré and moved to the left bank, to the passage de Pont-Neuf (the present-day rue Jacques‑Callot), just outside the Saint‑Germain quarter. Its presence displeased the authorities of the neighboring Collége des Quatres-Nations (the present Institut de France) and in 1689 they moved again, this time to the rue des Fossés des Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés (the modern rue de l'Ancienne‑Comédie), where they remained until 1770. The poor condition of the theater roof forced them to move in that year to the right bank, to the Hall of machines of the Tuileries Palace, which was much too large for them. In 1797 they moved back to the Left Bank, to the modern Odéon Theatre.[3]
The first
The Treaty of Paris
A significant event in American history took place on 3 September 1783 at the Hotel York at 56 rue Jacob; the signing of the Treaty of Paris between Britain and the United States, which ended the American Revolution and granted the U.S. its independence. The signing followed the American victory at the Siege of Yorktown, won with assistance of the French fleet and French army. The American delegation included Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay. After the signing, they remained for a commemorative painting by the American artist Benjamin West, but the British delegates refused to pose for the painting, so the painting was never finished.
The French Revolution
Because of its numerous printers and publishers, Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés, and especially the Cordeliers Section of what is now the 6th arrondissement, became centers of revolutionary activity after 1789; they produced thousands of pamphlets, newspapers, and proclamations which influenced the Parisian population and that of France as a whole. The prison of the Abbey of Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés, a two-storey building near the church, was filled with persons who had been arrested for suspicion of counter-revolutionary motives: former aristocrats, priests who refused to accept the revolutionary Constitution, foreigners, and so forth. By September 1792, Paris prisons were quite full. The former king and queen were political prisoners and were moved from the Tuileries Palace to the old Knights Templar towers on the right bank, where there was less risk of rescue or escape. France was at war; the Duke of Brunswick had just issued his menacing manifesto, stating that if the former monarchy were not restored, he would raze Paris, and his troops were only a few days away. Now these political prisoners began to be viewed as a genuine threat, should any of them be conspiring with France's enemies. In what was a planned but inhumane tactic, politicians at Paris sent bands of criminals, armed mainly with pikes and axes, into each prison. Although at least one deputy from the Convention accompanied each band, the results were horrifying. Hundreds of prisoners were cut down in the first week in September. As Englishman Arthur Young noted, the street outside one prison literally ran red with blood. The former Cordeliers Convent, closed by the revolutionaries, became the headquarters of one of the most radical factions, whose leaders included Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins, though both would be run out by ever more extreme factions. The radical revolutionary firebrand, Swiss physician Jean-Paul Marat, lived in the Cordeliers Section.
The Monastery of Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés was closed and its religious ornaments were taken away. The buildings of the monastery were declared national property and sold or rented to private owners. One large building was turned into a gunpowder storeroom; it exploded, wrecking a large part of the monastery.
Another large monastery in the quarter, that of the Petits-Augustins, had been closed and stripped of its religious ornamentation. The empty buildings were taken over by an archaeologist, Alexandre Lenoir, who turned it into a depot to collect and preserve the furniture, decorations, and art treasures of the nationalised churches and monasteries. The old monastery officially became the Museum of French Monuments. The paintings collected were transferred to the Louvre, where they became the property of the Central Museum of the Arts, the ancestor of the modern Louvre, which opened there at the end of 1793.[5]
The 19th century
The École des Beaux-Arts
The
Haussmann
The vast public works projects of
Oscar Wilde
The quarter was also the temporary home of many musicians, artists and writers from abroad, including Richard Wagner who lived for several months on rue Jacob.
The writer
The small hotel where Wilde died became famous; later guests included
The 20th century: non-conformism
In the first half of the 20th century, Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés and nearly the whole of the 6th arrondissement, was a densely populated working‑class neighborhood, whose population was declining. The population of the 6th arrondissement was 101,584 in 1921, and dropped to 83,963. In the postwar years, the housing was in poor condition; only 42 percent of residences had indoor toilets, and only 23 percent had their own showers or baths. By 19-0[clarification needed] the population of the 6th fell to 47,942, a drop of fifty percent in seventy years. In 1954 workers represented 19.2 percent of the population of the quarter; 18.1 percent in 1962.[10]
In the years after World War II, Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés was known primarily for its cafés and its bars, its diversity and its non-conformism. The bars were a popular destination for American soldiers and sailors after the war. It was also known as a meeting place for the largely-clandestine gay community of Paris, which at the time frequented the Café de Flore and the Café Carrefour, an all-night restaurant.[11] Because of its low rents and proximity to the University, the quarter was also popular with students from the French colonies in Africa. There were between three and five thousand African students in the city; their association had its headquarters at 184 boulevard Saint‑Germain and 28 rue Serpente. Because of the number of workers, it also hosted an important bureau of the French Communist Party.
Jazz
Immediately after the War, Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés and the nearby Saint-Michel neighbourhood became home to many small jazz clubs, mostly located in cellars, due to the shortage of any suitable space, and because the music at late hours was less likely to disturb the neighbors. The first to open in 1945 was the Caveau des Lorientais, near boulevard Saint‑Michel, which introduced Parisians to New Orleans Jazz, played by clarinetist
Existentialism
The literary life of Paris after World War II was centered in Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés, both because of the atmosphere of non-conformism and because of the large concentration of book stores and publishing houses. Because most writers lived in tiny rooms or apartments, they gathered in cafés, most famously the Café de Flore, the Brasserie Lipp and Les Deux Magots, where the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and writer Simone de Beauvoir held court. Sartre (1905–1980) was the most prominent figure of the period; he was a philosopher, the founder of the school of existentialism, but also a novelist, playwright, and theater director. He also was very involved in the Paris politics of the left; after the war he was a follower (though not a member) of the Communist Party, then broke with the communists after the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and became an admirer of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, then of Mao-tse Tung. In 1968 he joined the demonstrations against the government, standing on a barrel to address striking workers at the Renault factory in Billancourt.[13] The legends of Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés describe him as frequenting the jazz clubs of the neighborhood, but Sartre wrote that he rarely visited them, finding them too crowded, uncomfortable and loud.[14] Simone de Beauvoir (1902–1986), famous philosopher, the lifelong companion of Sartre, was another important literary figure, both as an early proponent of feminism and as an autobiographer and novelist.
After the Second World War, the neighbourhood became the centre of intellectuals and philosophers, actors, singers and musicians. Existentialism co-existed with jazz and chanson in the cellars on the rue de Rennes. Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Juliette Gréco, Léo Ferré, Jean-Luc Godard, Boris Vian, and François Truffaut were all at home there. But there were also poets such as Jacques Prévert and artists such as Giovanni Giacometti. As a residential address Saint‑Germain is no longer quite as fashionable as the area further south towards the Jardin du Luxembourg, partly due to Saint‑Germain's increased popularity among tourists.
Abduction
On 29 November 1965, Mehdi Ben Barka, the leader of opposition to the government of the King of Morocco, was kidnapped as he emerged from the door of the Brasserie Lipp. His body was never found.[15]
Transportation
The area is served by the stations of the Paris Métro:
- Saint-Germain-des-Prés
- Mabillon
Literature
Many writers have written about this Parisian district in prose such as Boris Vian, Marcel Proust, Gabriel Matzneff (see La Nation française), Jean-Paul Caracalla or in Japanese poetry in the case of Nicolas Grenier. Egyptian writer Albert Cossery spent the later part of his life living in a hotel in this district. James Baldwin frequented the cafés, written about in Notes of a Native Son. Charles Dickens describes the fictional Tellson's Bank as "established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris" in his novel A Tale of Two Cities.
Economy
At one time numerous publishers were located in the area. Gentrifying real estate values then intervened. By 2009 many publishers, including Hachette Livre and Flammarion had moved out of the community.[16]
See also
- Boulevard Saint-Germain
- Rue Bonaparte
- Latin Quarter
References
Notes and citations
- ^ Dussault 2014, p. 21.
- ^ Fierro 1996, p. 876.
- ^ Fierro 1996, pp. 791–792.
- ^ Fierro 1996, p. 742.
- ^ Sarmant 2012, p. 145.
- ^ Fierro 1996, pp. 528–529.
- ^ Ellmann 1988, p. 527.
- ^ Ellmann 1988, p. 528.
- ^ Ellmann 1988, p. 546.
- ^ Dussault 2014, p. 22.
- ^ Dussault 2014, pp. 59–63.
- ^ Bezbakh 2004, p. 872.
- ^ Bezbakh 2004, p. 864.
- ^ Dussault 2014, p. 128.
- ^ Fierro 1996, p. 649.
- ^ Launet 2009.
Bibliography
- Dussault, Éric (2014). L'invention de Saint-Germain-des-Prés (in French). Paris: Vendémiere. ISBN 978-2-36358-078-8.
- Bezbakh, Pierre (2004). Petit Larousse de l'histoire de France (in French). Paris: Larousse. ISBN 978-2-03-505369-5.
- ISBN 978-0-394-75984-5.
- Fierro, Alfred (1996). Histoire et dictionnaire de Paris. Bouquins (in French). Paris: Robert Laffont. OL 610571M.
- Launet, Edouard (2 November 2009). "Pas de quartier pour les éditeurs". Libération (in French). Paris. from the original on 5 November 2009.
Après Flammarion ou Hachette, le Seuil va quitter le périmètre littéraire de Saint‑Germain‑des‑Prés, à Paris. Non sans nostalgie, et en y gardant un pied‑à‑terre de prestige
- Sarmant, Thierry (2012). Histoire de Paris : politique, urbanisme, civilisation. Gisserot Histoire (in French). Paris: Editions Gisserot. ISBN 978-2-7558-0330-3.
External links
- "The trendy and cultural guide of Saint-Germain-des-Prés". Les Germanopratines.