Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
Boulevard Raspail is entirely modern, cut across streets of bygone ages,
their houses of historic memory razed to make way for it. The recently
erected No. 117 stands on the site of an old house where Victor Hugo
dwelt and wrote for thirteen years and received the notable men of his
day. Beneath the tree we see in the wall at No. 112 the poet loved to
sit and read. Reaching the top of the boulevard we see the ancient
Jesuit chapel, between Rue de Sèvres and Rue du Cherche-Midi.
Boulevard Edgar-Quinet began as boulevard de Montrouge. Its chief point
of interest is the Montparnasse cemetery dating from 1826, with its
numerous tombs of notable persons. There we see, too, an ivy-covered
tower dating from the seventeenth century, known as la Tour-du-Moulin,
once the possession of a community of monks.
Boulevard de Vaugirard (eighteenth century) included in past days the
course of the modernized boulevard Pasteur. We see old houses at
intervals here and in the Rue du Château which led formerly to the
hunting-lodge of the duc de Maine. In Rue Dutot, leading out of
boulevard Pasteur, we come to the great Institut Pasteur, built in 1900,
with its wonderful laboratories, its perfect organization for its own
special, invaluable branches of chemical study. The tomb of its founder
is there, too, in a crypt built by his pupils, his disciples. Behind
the central building we see a hospital for animals. The Lycée Buffon at
No. 16 covers the site of the ancient Vaugirard cemetery. Boulevard
Garibaldi began in 1789 as boulevard de Meudon, towards which it ran--at
a long distance; then it took the name of Javel, its more immediate
quarter, then of Grenelle through which it stretched. Some of the older
houses along its course and in adjoining streets, as also along the
course and adjoining streets of the present boulevard de Grenelle, its
continuation, still stand, none of special interest. A famous barrier
wall was in bygone days along the line where we see the Metropolitian
railway. Up against its wall, just in front of the station Dupleix, many
political prisoners of mark were shot in the years between 1797 and
1815.
The boulevards des Invalides, de Montparnasse and de Port-Royal make one
long line. Boulevard des Invalides has its chief point of interest at
No. 33, the old hôtel Biron, later the convent of the Sacré-Cœur,
then Rodin’s studio, and Paris home--now in part the museum he
bequeathed to Paris (_see_ pp. 192, 194).
Boulevard Montparnasse, formed in 1760, shows us many fine
eighteenth-century _hôtels_ and some smaller structures of the same
period. On the site of No. 25, the _hôtel_ of the duc de Vendôme,
grandson of Henri IV, was the home of the children of Louis XIV by
Madame de Montespan.
[Illustration: CLOÎTRE DE L’ABBAYE DE PORT-ROYAL]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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