🌸 Happy Mother's Day 🌸
Fête des Mères / Mother's Day in France 2026:
Sunday May 31
Above: spring blossoms light up the Latin Quarter
Showing posts with label quartier latin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quartier latin. Show all posts
10 May 2026
18 April 2026
Soaring Saturday
The awe-inspiring nave of the Collège des Bernardins, founded in 1245.
***
If you like to bask in Gothic architecture as much as I do, then this little-known-to-outsiders collège, a former Cistercian college/monastery complex of the University of Paris, hits all the marks. It includes significant surviving Gothic elements from the original Cistercian monastic buildings and cloister area that were part of the dense cluster of religious and scholarly institutions in the medieval Latin Quarter. A vibrant cultural venue today, it regularly hosts a rich program of concerts (especially classical music, chamber music, and sacred music), along with many other activities. Its Gothic nave offers exceptional acoustics, which makes performances feel almost transcendent. - BPJ
20 rue de Poissy 75005
4 April 2026
11 August 2025
Meander Monday
The Latin Quarter, a favorite quartier to just wander.
***
I've seen it more than once. A starry-eyed tourist steps into Paris’s Quartier Latin, imagining there will be rumba in the streets. She’s packed a bright sundress and practiced a few merengue moves, hoping she'll come across a vibrant fiesta or at least a few Havana-style clubs. But instead of sambas and paso dobles she finds quiet cobblestone alleys filled with bookshops and cafés with students arguing about the latest PSG match over overpriced espresso.
In Paris, the Latin Quarter refers to that historic district on the left bank of the Seine, centered around the Sorbonne University in the 5th and 6th arrondissements. Its name, far from implying a Latino culture, originates from the Middle Ages when Latin was the lingua franca of academia.
In the 12th century Paris became a major intellectual hub with the founding of the University of Paris, later the Sorbonne. Students and scholars, drawn from across Europe, communicated in Latin, the universal language of learning. The area around the university filled with schools, monasteries, and student lodgings and became known as the "Quartier Latin”: Latin was spoken in lectures, debates, and daily life. By the 13th century, the district was hosting figures like Thomas Aquinas and over time, the Latin Quarter retained its academic and bohemian character.
By the 19th and 20th centuries, it evolved into a hub for artists, writers, and intellectuals, with cafés and bookshops like Shakespeare and Company drawing luminaries such as Hemingway and Sartre. Its narrow, medieval streets like Rue de la Huchette and landmarks like the Panthéon, Sorbonne University and great domed l'Institut de France cemented its reputation as a cultural and intellectual heart of Paris. - BPJ
In Paris, the Latin Quarter refers to that historic district on the left bank of the Seine, centered around the Sorbonne University in the 5th and 6th arrondissements. Its name, far from implying a Latino culture, originates from the Middle Ages when Latin was the lingua franca of academia.
In the 12th century Paris became a major intellectual hub with the founding of the University of Paris, later the Sorbonne. Students and scholars, drawn from across Europe, communicated in Latin, the universal language of learning. The area around the university filled with schools, monasteries, and student lodgings and became known as the "Quartier Latin”: Latin was spoken in lectures, debates, and daily life. By the 13th century, the district was hosting figures like Thomas Aquinas and over time, the Latin Quarter retained its academic and bohemian character.
By the 19th and 20th centuries, it evolved into a hub for artists, writers, and intellectuals, with cafés and bookshops like Shakespeare and Company drawing luminaries such as Hemingway and Sartre. Its narrow, medieval streets like Rue de la Huchette and landmarks like the Panthéon, Sorbonne University and great domed l'Institut de France cemented its reputation as a cultural and intellectual heart of Paris. - BPJ
18 June 2025
12 June 2025
Holy history
Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, perched on a hill behind the Panthéon, was started in 1492, the year Christopher Columbus completed a perilous gamble across the Atlantic and landed in "The New World."
12 April 2025
Sit-down Saturday
Students from nearby Sorbonne University take in some sunshine.
Above: Le Panthéon
11 April 2025
French toast Friday
Pain Perdu, the original French Toast, topped with house French vanilla ice cream and caramel-butter sauce, in the Latin Quarter at tea time.
TRAM Café and Librairie
47 rue de la Montagne-Ste-Geneviève 75005
2 January 2025
14 October 2024
6 March 2024
Wine Wednesday
Champagne, wine, beer and other refreshments set out for an evening screening at one of the many small arthouse cinémas that dot the Latin Quarter.
***
Years ago, while living in Spain I’d treat myself to weekend movie marathons in those tucked-away arthouse theaters on Paris’ Left Bank back streets - unassuming small venues that championed obscure international indie films and emerging filmmakers.
The moment I'd arrive in Paris, my ritual began: straight to the nearest kiosk for the latest Pariscope or L'Officiel des Spectacles, those pocket-sized weekly bibles that listed every screening across the city. Over breakfast, pencil in hand, I’d scour the pages, plotting the perfect itinerary, circling titles and noting showtimes - what to see, in what order, at which cinemas - creating the optimal sequence without wasting a single reel.
These were films from everywhere - U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, Italy, and beyond, and they had to be in their original languages, marked VO (version originale). I (mostly) went for French films and off-the-radar indies. In Barcelona, most mainstream films were dubbed into Spanish or burdened with clumsy subtitles that flattened nuance and stole focus. Paris delivered actors’ real voices, unadulterated, and as so many of the titles were English-language anyway, the French subtitles stayed discreetly at the bottom, never stealing the show. - BPJ
The moment I'd arrive in Paris, my ritual began: straight to the nearest kiosk for the latest Pariscope or L'Officiel des Spectacles, those pocket-sized weekly bibles that listed every screening across the city. Over breakfast, pencil in hand, I’d scour the pages, plotting the perfect itinerary, circling titles and noting showtimes - what to see, in what order, at which cinemas - creating the optimal sequence without wasting a single reel.
These were films from everywhere - U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, Italy, and beyond, and they had to be in their original languages, marked VO (version originale). I (mostly) went for French films and off-the-radar indies. In Barcelona, most mainstream films were dubbed into Spanish or burdened with clumsy subtitles that flattened nuance and stole focus. Paris delivered actors’ real voices, unadulterated, and as so many of the titles were English-language anyway, the French subtitles stayed discreetly at the bottom, never stealing the show. - BPJ
Below: some surviving cinémas
Latin Quarter / Quartier Latin:
Cinéma Le Champo
Cinéma Saint-André-des-Arts
Christine Cinéma Club
Le Reflet Médicis
La Filmothèque du Quartier Latin
Studio Galande
(besides a roster of independent films, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show” in VO w/performances every Friday and Saturday night. Bring a bottle of water and rice
Montmartre:
Montmartre:
Studio 28
(must-see interior by Jean Cocteau w/bar / charming tea salon / courtyard area)
16 April 2023
Today in Paris
Above: out / about in the Latin Quarter; a flower vendeuse on a lively market street corner; café-ing in Montmartre
Below: dancing to accordion music
***
For awhile now I've been receiving concerned texts and messages with "Are you ok?" or "Paris is burning!" in the subject line and each time, my reply is the same: manifs here are accepted as a part of life and while this one is particularly passionate for many reasons - it's not just about having to wait two more years to retire - many Parisians, if it were not brought to our attention that these upheavals were going on, would not even know. The fact is, many of the social benefits enjoyed by workers in France today, whether an appropriate living wage for waiters with benefits or paid vacations for all workers, much more, are the result of this sort of relentless pushback. C'est vrai.
Paris is a large and spread out metropolis with many diverse neighborhoods. And though it is anyone's guess if these protests will eventually engulf the entire city, you can rest assured dear readers that right now, and in spite of what the media is blaring, Paris is teeming with hordes of tourists. Except for the usual blips of grèves such as delayed trains or the recent garbage strike in support of the current protests, ended for now (10 of the 20 arrondissements or just half of the city was affected, without a mention in international news), life goes on. As it should. - BPJ
Paris is a large and spread out metropolis with many diverse neighborhoods. And though it is anyone's guess if these protests will eventually engulf the entire city, you can rest assured dear readers that right now, and in spite of what the media is blaring, Paris is teeming with hordes of tourists. Except for the usual blips of grèves such as delayed trains or the recent garbage strike in support of the current protests, ended for now (10 of the 20 arrondissements or just half of the city was affected, without a mention in international news), life goes on. As it should. - BPJ
***
Motto of Paris:
Fluctuat nec mergitur!
Il est battu par les flots, mais ne sombre pas!
"Tossed by the waves, but does not sink!"
11 January 2023
Wistful Wednesday
Large teddies, leftovers from le confinement, can still be seen at some restaurants and cafés all over the city.
Above: outside a café in the Latin Quarter
22 September 2022
Booking
View from the doorstep of a favorite librairie in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Taschen
2 rue de Buci 75006
27 June 2022
28 September 2020
13 March 2019
12 March 2019
11 March 2019
12 October 2018
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