Flâneries in Paris: A Walk in Saint-Germain-des-Prés

This is the 19th in a series of walking tours highlighting the sites and stories of diverse districts of Paris.

No flânerie should ever be a rush. It’s a go-with-the-flow sort of walk, which may end up longer or shorter than you’d intended. Regular readers may recall that my plan for walking between two of the city’s grand churches, Saint-Sulpice and Saint-Germain-des-Près, was never finished, even though it’s really a 10-minute stroll if you don’t get distracted. But the various delights of Saint Sulpice – the square, the lion fountain, the Delacroix paintings inside – had turned the walk into a pleasurable dally. Time passed, I lingered, I got no further.

It was on another day then, months later, that I went back to “the poshest market in Paris” as I have seen the Marché Saint-Germain described, to carry on where I left off. As soon as I entered the cheerful market entrance, with its sparkly sign where the word alimentaire is written large, I knew that culinary delights awaited. The Comptoir du Marché’s scribbled blackboard promised a three-course meal for 25 euros, and the carefully worded descriptions were enticing. If it weren’t just 10 am, which entrée would I choose: millefeuille with goat’s cheese or salmon tartare with a ginger and lemon sauce? Hard to say, but really it was picnic items I wanted and there was plenty of choice: Iranian pâtisseries, gâteau ricotta from the Italian delicatessen, little tubs of delicately braised seasonal vegetables.

I popped a couple of carefully wrapped little packages into my bag and set off into Rue du Four, a narrow street whose name gives away its history. The four was a communal oven which belonged to the Abbey of Saint-Germain in the 13th century, the place where the monks baked their bread. At the end, I turned in to the even tinier Rue des Ciseaux, a good example of the medieval streets which were mostly swept away by Baron Haussmann in the 19th century and replaced with majestic avenues. And sure enough, just at the end of Rue des Ciseaux was one of his showpieces, the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Across to my left I could see the dark green awnings of Les Deux Magots, the café’s name picked out in smart gold lettering, along with the description Café Littéraire, a reminder that this was a venue so favored by writers in the 1930s that a literary prize was named after it. Le Prix des Deux Magots has been awarded practically every year since 1933, with just a year or two missed during World War Two. It’s always a temptation to stop off for un café crème on the café’s sunny terrace and perhaps pop inside to see the photos of many famous authors from its past. Simone de Beauvoir is there, bent in solitary concentration over a manuscript, and so is Ernest Hemingway in military uniform, captured perusing a letter. But today, I was heading for the church instead.

The history of Saint-Germain-des-Près is confusing. The original abbey’s founding in the 6th century makes it nominally the oldest church in Paris, but there’s practically nothing of it left. Its many layers of history defy simple description, ranging from destruction by Vikings and the revolution alike, rebuilding and renovation in both medieval times and the 19th and 21st centuries. Better perhaps, on a quick visit, to just gaze along its beautiful nave, the cream walls cool and calm against the deep red, pale green and gold of the pillars and then up at the vaulted ceiling, where little golden stars cover the deep blue panels like a starry night.

In the tiny garden square outside the church, a circle of well-worn benches was grouped around a patch of bushes. I watched owners guiding their dogs to the low-level drinking fountain at the entrance and pondered the mysteries of the monument to the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, sitting among the bushes. Why had Picasso made a carving of his mistress’s head to honor the memory of his friend? And was it true that when the bust was stolen in the 1990s, then “found” a few months later, that the authorities had substituted a copy? Some locals claim the replacement is a fake. But either way, the piece recalls the early years of the 20th century when Picasso, his muse Dora Maar and his friend the poet liked to socialize together in Saint-Germain.

I’d often read about the Place de Furstenberg and, realizing it was just a street or two away from the back of the church, went off to see for myself whether it really deserved the descriptions I’d seen of it as “the prettiest (or most charming or most romantic) square in Paris.” The maze of tiny streets around it were hung with huge fabric lanterns, all in different colors and patterns. I’d have to come back one evening to get the full effect, but they were pretty and they lent a bohemian atmosphere to this quite hidden little corner. The shops, I slowly realized, were for luxuries: art galleries, antiques, exclusive clothes and an upmarket florist. Somewhere to wander, to hope the owners wouldn’t be too disappointed by yet another customer keen to look, but maybe not to buy.

La Place de Furstenberg was indeed an idyllic little spot.I admired the elegant houses, grouped symmetrically around an oval center where four tall, thin trees – I found out later they’re called Paulownias – framed an old-fashioned iron lamppost. And in the middle of it all, a brand-new sofa, covered in splashes of primary colors which screamed out “look at me” in contrast to the understated creamy coloring of the houses. Was it an advert? Or an art installation? I wondered how long I would have to wait to see someone brave enough to sit down on it. But the square had the feel of a place where everyone would know better than that, so I moved on.

I spotted a plaque stating that the artist Delacroix once lived at number 6, and, on a whim, decided to pop in. For me, the stand-out feature was the garden, reached by steps leading down from the back of the house, with the painter’s workshop in a little outbuilding half-way down. Sitting in a corner amid lawns and flowerbeds, I thought about a diary entry Delacroix had written in 1857, which was quoted in the museum. “It is always a pleasure to look down from my workshop into my little garden.” This, he said, was the place where he liked to “breathe a little air” when taking a break from his work. It was easy to imagine the artist sitting just where I was, perhaps musing about the painting he was working on, maybe just admiring the plants or pulling out a stray weed. That’s the thing about Paris, isn’t it? Ghosts from the past are everywhere, if you just keep alert to their presence. I’m glad I didn’t rush.