Saint-Germain-des-Pres

Saint-Germain-des-Pres is the legendary intellectual and artistic heart of Paris — a neighborhood on the Left Bank whose cafes, bookshops, art galleries, and ancient abbey have made it one of the most celebrated addresses in the history of Western culture, synonymous with the existentialist philosophy that Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir developed at corner tables in the Cafe de Flore and Les Deux Magots in the years after World War II. The neighborhood's intellectual tradition stretches back centuries — Voltaire, Rousseau, and other Enlightenment philosophers gathered in the cafes of Saint-Germain, and in the early 20th century the neighborhood became the center of the Paris art world when Picasso, Matisse, and other modernist artists settled in its studios. The jazz clubs of Saint-Germain became legendary in the 1950s and 1960s, when American musicians including Miles Davis, Chet Baker, and Sidney Bechet found appreciative audiences in the neighborhood's smoky basement clubs, creating a Franco-American jazz culture that was central to the postwar cultural renaissance of Paris. Today Saint-Germain-des-Pres has become one of the most fashionable and expensive neighborhoods in Paris — its historic cafes now serve tourists and well-heeled locals, its bookshops compete with luxury fashion boutiques, and its galleries show works priced for collectors rather than starving artists — but the neighborhood retains a distinct intellectual atmosphere and its ancient Romanesque abbey church, one of the oldest in Paris, remains a serene oasis in the midst of the busy streets.