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“It was not far for
me to go to Lipp, and each café I passed….my eyes, my nose and stomach were
trained for that…..made that walk every time something special”. The way
Ernest Hemingway strolled all the time to Brasserie Lipp and couldn’t imagine
Saint-Germain without it, Parisians today also have the same strange trend to be
attracted to this nice and famous brasserie of 1880.Certainly not for the food
(very average according to serious critics, very mediocre according to my humble
opinion), but to get a table that would symbolize their social status.
The head
waiter was so kind to explain: who can sit in the first dining room along the
wall, left or right (preferably on the right, next to the radiator), is someone
who IS SOMEBODY in Paris. Politicians or journalists who are sent upstairs must
be very careful for their future…..
But before crossing
the street from Lipp to start our walk, let me give you some of my nostalgic
feelings…
In previous
article I pointed already to the contemporary pitiful tendency of Saint-Germain
to be invaded by the garment, clothing, junk food and banking
industry. Most of the small original commerces that made the area so typical had
to disappear. Maybe rue Jacob and some streets around managed to escape for the
moment. All others like bookshops and libraries were sacrificed on the altar of
artificial, pretence, show-off and make-believe. Even the disappearance of the Slavik
style Drugstore St.Germain, heavily criticized, in his when it was build
35 years ago, takes away something from this area. They are putting up another haute
couture in it! The last survivors of the literary St.Germain are put in
jeopardy and with them it's the profound character of the area that is mortally
wounded.
After spewing a little bit of gal (sorry about that),
let’s start our walk. Passing in front of the Café de Flore and the Café des
Deux Magots, let’s swallow our grief about the so rudely injury made to the
memories of long gone days by seeing what is become of these two cafes, visited
now by millions of tourist all over the world.
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Cafe des Deux Magots |
If you want to sit down and look
at the tourist hordes and noisy traffic, be prepared to pay the price…...But if you’re the cultural type, just cross the street
and let’s visit the EGLISE DE SAINT-GERMAIN DES PRES.
The Church of St.Germain des Pres is the oldest of Paris.
According to a legend it was built in the 6th century by Childebert I
of Spain around the golden cross of Salomon and the tunic of Saint Vincent.
The church (as many churches in Paris) was destroyed by
the Normans (they used the wood to repair their drakkars!) in the 9th
century and rebuilt in the 11th. From then the abbey will become very
popular and attract a lot of wise men and scholars. It seems that
about 10,000 people lived in a small space inside the walls surrounding as well
the church as the Benedictine abbey.Around the middle ages the abbey came under
the direct orders of the pope. During the French revolution, the abbey had to suffer a
lot. Everything was looted, destroyed and burnt. Even the ancient graves of the
Merovingians had to disappear. And to complete the disaster the library burnt
down in 1794. Only great tower and the choir of the 12th remain. So did the
abbatial place (at the corner of
rue de l'Abbaye and rue du Passage de la Petite Boucherie). In one of the chapels, decorated with a modern sculpture of St.Germanus, you can
easily spot some original elements of the early style of the church. Left of the church a little square with a sculpture of Picasso in honour
of Apollinaire and ruins of a chapel of the Virgin.
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Nave of Saint-Germain church |
Bibliography:
Vie et histoire des arrondissements de Paris, ed.Hervas, 1985-1988, 20
volumes—Nouvelle Histoire de Paris, ed.Hachette (20 vol.since 1971), 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 Paris1998-99---"Abbaye
et vie religieuse à Saint-Germain",Abbé Piérard (Presses
Théologiques 1985)
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