Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
The buildings we see there on the odd-number side opposite the Palais de
Justice: the Tribunal du Commerce, the Préfecture de Police, the
Firemen’s barracks, are all of nineteenth-century erection. So we come
to the boulevard St-Michel, the far-famed “Boule-Miche” of the Latin
Quarter, forming the boundary-line between arrondissements V and VI. As
a boulevard it is not of ancient date. It began at its northernly end in
1855 as boulevard Sébastopol, Rive Gauche. Soon it was prolonged and
renamed to memorize the ancient chapel erewhile in one of the streets it
had swept away. Place St-Michel from which it starts has to-day a modern
aspect. Almost all traces of the ancient Place du Pont St-Michel, as it
was in bygone days, have vanished. The huge fountain we see and cannot
admire, though perhaps we ought to, replaces the fountain of 1684. The
arched entrance to the narrow street Rue de l’Hirondelle, once
Irondelle, as an old inscription tells us, which began in 1179 as Rue de
l’Arondale-en-Laas, and the glimpse at a little distance of the entrance
to ancient streets on the boulevard St-Germain side, give the only
old-world touch to the _place_. The high blackened walls we see in this
Rue de l’Hirondelle are the remains of the ancient collège d’Autun
founded in 1341. At No. 20, on the site of the ancient _hôtel_ of the
bishops of Chartres, is an eighteenth-century _hôtel_. No. 38 of the
boulevard is on the site of the house belonging to the Cordeliers, whose
monastery was near by, where the royal library was kept from the days of
Louis XIII to 1666. The Lycée St-Louis, founded in 1280 as the college
d’Harcourt, covers the site of several ancient structures. A
fragment--the only one known--of the boundary wall of Henri II, is
within the college grounds, and beneath them the remains of a Roman
theatre were found in 1861, and more remains in 1908. Where the
boulevard meets Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, the city wall and a gate of
Philippe-Auguste passed in olden days. And that was the site of the
ancient _place_. No. 60, the École des Mines founded in 1783, and
housed at the Mint, at that time an _hôtel_ Rue de l’Université, then
transferred to Montiers in Savoie, finally settled here in 1815 in the
hôtel Vendôme built in 1707 for the Chartreux, let in 1714 to the
duchesse de Vendôme, who died there soon afterwards. This fine old
structure still forms the central part of the Mining School. At No. 62
we see the Geological Map offices. In the court of No. 64 we find a
house built by the Chartreux, inhabited in past days by the marquis de
Ségur, and in later times by Leconte de Lisle. The railway station Gare
de Sceaux at No. 66 covers the site of the once well-known Café Rouge.
In the old Rue Royer-Collard opening at No. 71, in the sixteenth century
Rue St-Dominique d’Enfer, we see several quaint old houses. Roman pots
were found some years ago beneath the pavement of the _impasse_. The
house at No. 91 is on ground once within the cemetery St-Jacques. César
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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