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The Latin Quarter – brains & taverns

Students, priests & outlaws

We enter Sorbonne lands. The atmosphere is instantly appears more muted ...

distant legacy of the schools where most of Europe's clergy was trained. That did not make it a quiet place.

     

     

    • Study or hang?
    Fifteenth-century students

     

    Toward 1400 the "Latin Quarter", which takes its name from the language students from many parts of France and Europe had in common,  is said to have boasted 250 taverns for 8000 residents.
    The fate that inspired a great poem

     

    Brawls and crimes were constant. We use the 15th-century poems of François Villon to describe the lives of students, priests and outlaws, who were often one and the same.

     

     

     

     

    • We follow winding medieval streets...

     

    past what may be the planet's greatest number of theaters playing classic and foreign movies.

     

    We pass the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where some of France's best students prepare the stringent examinations for the "Grandes Ecoles", equivalents of Harvard and MIT, but far, far harder to get into.

     

    We describe the educational system Napoleon initiated – where students who pass these examinations become civil servants and are paid to attend top schools.

     

     

     

    • Saint-Germain-des-Prés, anti-Establishment thinkers' spiritual home...
    Saint-Germain and Louvre, 15th century

    Saint-Germain-in-the-fields, with its cafés or nightspots where Existentialists discussed, Juliette Gréco sang and jazz was recognized...

    The Pantheon, Latin Quarter landmark
    Same site

    is still the site of the planet's greatest concentration of bookstores and art galleries.

     

    It is on the other side of invisible 13-century ramparts.

     

     

    •   Ambush or clue?

     

     

    Segment of the wall built in around 1200

     

    The walk ends in a most surprising place, where we find a part of the 13th-century ramparts.

     

    We'll explain how, by settling outside the walls, the first Protestants gave the suburb a character that has endured, and perceive again how Paris is heir to her history. 

     

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    Credits: students / from "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" by Victor Hugo (detail); Book cover / Jean Favier, "François Villon, poet and adventurer" (the 15th-century student and outlaw is one of France's great poets) ; Saint-Germain in the 15th century / "Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry", Condé Museum (Chantilly) ; photos / Claude Abron