Saint-Germain des Prés

People visiting Paris should know that 'St-Germain-des-Prés' is actually the name of a church, the oldest church in Paris. Parts of it date to the 6th century, when a Benedictine abbey was founded on the site by Childebert, son of Clovis. The church was originally founded by Childebert to house a relic of the True Cross brought from Spain in 542. In the Middle Ages, the Church of St-Germain-des-Pres was so powerful, both religiously and culturally, that it became like a town within the town. (Source)

Saint-Germain des Prés is part of the intellectual Latin Quarter, with its high schools and universities. The surrounding streets were once the essence of café society, but the crowd has changed from poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud and writers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus to fashion gurus Karl Lagerfeld and Sonia Rykiel. This is reflected in the local shops, where Armani, not Aristotle, is now the lingua franca. (Source)

The legend of Saint-Germain-des-Prés began when a small group of intellectuals and artists around writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir virtually took up residence in some famous pubs and jazz clubs in the area. Most of the following (originally 2D) pictures come from the Internet (mostly with very bad resolution [72 dpi] and without any mention about the photographers); I shot the rest myself.