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Introduction

Walk inSt.Germain Brasserie Lipp Church St.Germain

Place Furstemberg
Musee Delacroix - Rue de Buci market

Hotel des Monnaies AcadémieFrançaise Eglise Saint-Sulpice

Jardin Luxembourg
Musee Zadkine

Closerie des Lilas
Rue du Cherche Midi

Paris-6th arr-Saint Germain des Prés-Parc du Luxembourg-Musee Zadkine 

Sudden pang of hunger???

Paris dining world!!!!

St.Germain at night

From the small rue Rotrou you can join that other oasis of peace and rest: THE JARDIN DU LUXEMBOURG.
Right away, next to the entrance of the rue Vaugirard is the famous “Fontaine de Médicis” (1624), THE favourite meeting place for lovers. The jardin du Luxembourg, named so many times in numerous books that each blade of grass can be counted to the French literary patrimony, is the ideal place to sit on a bench and rest your sore feet after a Jack’s walk. Have a taste of the “Parisian way of life”. A lot of students from the nearby Sorbonne are walking the alleys, studying and mumbling their courses. Yes, once those students were Baudelaire, Nerval, Verlaine, Rilke….. Seventy statues of prominent French are enhancing the area and about lunchtime the “boule” players have a game. At one of the ponds you can rent remote-controlled toy-ships. Parisian mothers love to walk their kids in this park.There is even a gardening-school and amateurs of beehives who produce several hundreds kilos honey a year.The famous “Guignol” (puppet theatre) with performances every school holiday for the children is still very popular (Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday and holidays). And a final curiosity: between the jardin and the Palais du Luxembourg (see later) adepts of “tai chi chuan” move with slowness, with the typical ceremonial of this martial art.  

Palais du Luxembourg-French Senate

I said “PALAIS DU LUXEMBOURG”! Let’s talk about it!  Housing the “Senate” (high chamber) it was built at the north side of the park in the 17th century by Marie de Medicis, widow of Henri IV and mother of Louis XIII. This palace was supposed to remind her of her Italian descent and shows therefore a lot of Italian building style elements. Salomon de Brosse was appointed the architect . Also the interior had to keep high standards. Rubens was bribed to Paris to execute a series of paintings about the life of the queen which are now all in a special room in the Louvre museum. The library of the palace contains a few Delacroix. During the French revolution the palace served some time as a prison, then the headquarters of the “Directoire” and the Consulate of Napoleon. Since then it is the home of the French Senate (except during WWII). You can visit the palace only one day a month: the first Sunday of the month, and better phone to be sure tel 0142342060  
Getting out at the south side, take the rue d’Assas and let’s get on to the MUSEE ZADKINE. Unfortunately unknown to most tourists it is one of my favourite museums. Closed Mondays and festive days it is a small museum but for real sculpture lovers. Zadkine was a French sculptor of Jewish Russian origin, very famous in Rotterdam where he sculpted the “symbol of a destroyed city (WWII)” called “Verwoeste Stad”. He lived in this house almost his entire life, from 1928 to 1967. He was first influenced by Braque and Picasso in cubism but the materials were different: iron, wood or bronze. Whatever he twisted, contorted and worked on he could dramatize his subjects without ever being abstract, always figurative. Go and see this museum if you like sculptures out of someone’s guts!  An interesting novelty installed recently is that blind people can feel the sculptures though a sort of “Braille” during special tours.  

Bibliography: Vie et histoire des arrondissements de Paris, ed.Hervas, 1985-1988, 20 volumes- Le piéton de Paris, by L.P. Fargue, ed.Gallimard 1997—Rive Gauche, une expérience unique, by Cl.Evrard, ed.Albin 1991--- Guide du Routard Paris 1998-99 -Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris, by J.Hillairet, ed.Minuit 1985, Musées insolites, Jean Hermann ed.Lemaitre1995