Paris: St Michel - Luxembourg - Gobelins

Le Palais du Luxembourg

We began this walk at the intersection of two of Paris's great streets: Boulevard St Germain and Boulevard St Michel (Boul Mich to true Parisiens and bluffers alike). The route initially goes past the Hotel de Cluny, now a museum of medieval art, the former Cordeliers convent, and the house where Sarah Bernhardt was born. You return to Boulevard St Germain and pass the fine statue of Danton ...

...to turn into rue de L'Odeon with the Theatre de l'Odeon itself standing proudly at the end, following the precepts of classical street planning.



In fact it is the rear facade - actually more impressive than the main one.

From here it is a few steps to enter the grounds of the Palais du Luxembourg. The building, which now houses the Senate, is mainly 19th century, but the gardens were laid out in 1613 for Marie de Medeci, widow of Henri IV.

There were an extraordinary number of joggers, many of whom seemed to be on a "round the Luxembourg fun run". There was immediately a lovely view towards Les Invalides.



We walked across to the handsome Orangerie.



Just as in the Palais-Royal yesterday - and on a much larger scale - the gardens were busy with people practicing tai chi, sword fighting and all sorts of exotic oriental activities. The reminiscence of what we saw in China was strong.

Returning to the main section of the garden, we walked away from the elegant 19th century facade ....


...and left the Luxembourg to the south to join the long, and rather quieter, Jardins de L'Observatoire.

We were thrilled by the fantastic 1927 Ecole d'Archeologie by the anti-modernist architect Paul Bigot. The walk book describes it as "ugly", but the combination of elements and styles seemed to us to be wonderfully different and striking.



At the end of the jardins is the Observatoire itself, a neo-classical building of 1672. Apparently the Paris meridian splits it exactly in half. Which of course invites the question what is or was the Paris meridian. According to Wikipedia it is now longitude 2°20′14.025″ east, but was a long-standing rival to Greenwich as the prime meridian of the world, as was the Antwerp meridian in Flanders.

In the rue Cassini, just to to the left of the Observatoire, our guidebook drew our attention to three quite lovely houses designed on the cusp of Art Nouveau and Art Deco by the Belgian architect Louis Sue. This is number 7.



At this point we had to abbreviate the rest of the route and head directly for our lunch rendezvous at Place d'Italie. This meant we missed the 17th century abbey church of Notre Dame de Grace and a couple of streets in the Gobelins district. However, we did pass the Manufacture Royal des Gobelins, which made tapestries. The handsome facade dates from 1912.



From: Gilles Desmonds - Walking Paris (New Holland).

Conditions: clear, sunny, bitterly cold wind.

Rating: four stars. Lovely gardens and some wonderful architectural surprises.