Saint-Germain-des-Prés: The Abbey of the Merovingian Kings
Why is it significant?
Face the stocky square bell tower at the corner of the boulevard and try to imagine it alone among fields. That is what des Prés means: in the meadows. When this abbey was founded, Paris was a small walled town on its island, and all of this was open countryside along the river.
Key Facts
| Place | Saint-Germain-des-Prés: The Abbey of the Merovingian Kings |
|---|---|
| Address | 3 Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 75006 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.85400, 2.33450 |
| Part of Walk | Ink, Coffee and Revolution: A Literary Walk Through Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
Face the stocky square bell tower at the corner of the boulevard and try to imagine it alone among fields. That is what des Prés means: in the meadows. When this abbey was founded, Paris was a small walled town on its island, and all of this was open countryside along the river.
Around the year 543, King Childebert, son of Clovis, founded a monastery here to hold precious relics he had brought back from a campaign in Spain, including the tunic of Saint Vincent. The bishop of Paris, Germain, consecrated it, and when he died in 576 he was buried here and gave the abbey its name. For more than a century, Merovingian kings were laid to rest inside, so this was once the royal necropolis of the Franks.
Viking raiders sacked and burned the abbey in the ninth century. What you see now was rebuilt afterwards: the tower dates from around the year 1000, one of the oldest bell towers in France, and the choir was consecrated by Pope Alexander the Third in 1163. It is often called the oldest church in Paris. During the Revolution, the abbey was turned into a gunpowder works, and in 1794 a huge explosion of stored saltpetre destroyed much of the monastery around it.
Step inside if you can. A recent restoration revealed nineteenth-century painted walls and starry blue vaults that had been hidden under grime for generations. In a side chapel lies René Descartes, the philosopher of I think, therefore I am, though the story goes that his skull went on its own long journey and ended up in a museum.
And look around: this square became, after 1945, the centre of the intellectual world. Jazz in cellar clubs, black polo necks, endless arguments about freedom. Walk to the corner of the boulevard, past the café with the two Chinese figures, to the one next door with green awnings.