II.1.2. SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS, RAMPART HEIR

MENU: 2.1.2. Saint-Germain, rampart heir

"THEY CROSSED THE SEINE AND CHARLIE FELT THE

SUDDEN PROVINCIAL QUALITY OF THE LEFT BANK..." 

-- Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1931

This is the passage where Fitzgerald leaves the wealthy, Americanized area around the Hotel Ritz

                         to make Saint-Germain the disorienting setting for his protagonist's defeat.

The area would become legendary as the planet's most intellectual neighborhood, where lived Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Picasso, Sydney Bechet, Richard Wright (...). One still crosses paths with stars in all domains.

 .

The left bank was always less commercial and more intellectual than the right. One reason: it was on the other side of the river from the main artery, which gave right-bank production its start. Another: The land belonged to the Church, which stressed learning, not commerce.

Adapted from Mappy

Intellectuality flowered most in Saint-Germain — because of the city wall. 

Crucifixion of the Parlement of Paris, toward 1450 / zoom 

King and saint in a field across the river from the Louvre, that is, at Saint-Germain. 

In brief:

• Outlaws and Protestants live beyond the rampart

• The Church and the Grandes Écoles ("Great schools")

• Intellectuals, cafés and the Occupation

• The Liberation and a brief golden age

• Hollywood's take

• Lasting change: Europe's capital of movies and jazz

• Brands attack, tradition holds on

• Art galleries' riches and traps

• Other galleries that one can trust

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Outlaws and Protestants live beyond the rampart