For many years, Saint-Germain-des-Pres is a stronghold of sans culottes, a refuge to artists, a paradise for bohemians. It’s where Marat published L’Ami du Peuple and Thomas Paine wrote The Privileges of Guy. Napoleon, Hemingway, and Sartre have all known as it house. Descartes is definitely buried there. Right now bestselling writer and Paris expert John Baxter requires listeners on a narrative tour of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which can be where Baxter makes his home.

Tucked along the shores of the Remaining Bank, Saint-Germain-des-Pres embodies so a lot of why is Paris special. Its cobblestone roads and ancient facades survive to this day, spared from modernization thanks to a quirk within their structure. Traditionally cheap rents captivated outsiders and politics dissidents from the days of Robespierre to the college student revolts of the 1960s. And its intellectual pedigree offers such luminaries as Pablo Picasso, Arthur Rimbaud, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir, Gertrude Stein, and Albert Camus.

Part-history, part-guidebook, Saint-Germain-des-Pres is normally a fresh take a look at one of the City of Light’s most iconic quarters, and a delight for fresh tourists and Paris veterans similar.