We are, after this general description, in a position to recognise the
site of the Cordeliers in modern Paris. As you go down the Boulevard St.
Germains, just before you reach the Boulevard St. Michel (going east),
you see a street leading off at a slight angle to the right. It is the
Rue de l’École de Médecine, the college after which it is named facing
both on this street and on the Boulevard. This street is merely the Rue
des Cordeliers broadened and modernised. As you go a few yards up this
street, you see on your left the great court of the college, and if you
stand at its gate and look at the opposite side of the street, at the new
buildings which are now the lecture-rooms and theatres of the Faculty,
you are looking at the site of the old church, which has disappeared
during this century. The street has been broadened by taking down the
southern side, so that the church would actually have overlapped the
modern street. Continuing, you pass on your right the open yard leading
up to what was the hall of the Cordeliers, and is now the museum of
surgery (the Musée Dupuytren), and a few yards farther brings you into
the Boulevard St. Michel. Following this very broad avenue for twenty
yards at the most, you may note a new street, the “Rue Racine,” turning
off to the right. This did not exist in Danton’s time, but it lies
_nearly_ on the line that separated the Cordeliers from the Collège
d’Harcourt (at present the Lycée St. Louis). As a fact, the line was a
trifle to the south of the Rue Racine, and of course more irregular.
The Rue Racine in its turn leads you into that old street the “Rue de
Monsieur le Prince.” If you turn again to the right and go down this some
hundred yards, you are still following the boundary of the Cordeliers,
till you reach the “Rue Antoine Dubois.” This is identical with the
old “Rue de l’Observance,” spoken of above, and a few steps down this
short street leads you to the starting-point in the “Rue de l’École de
Médecine.” Such a modern itinerary would describe as nearly as is now
possible the circumference of the college and estate of the Cordeliers.
The quadrilateral comprised by these four streets, the Rue de l’École de
Médecine, the Rue Racine, the Rue M. de le Prince, and the Rue Antoine
Dubois, is the site of the famous convent and its grounds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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