A Literary Stroll through Paris Rive Gauche

Rub shoulders with great literary figures near the Hôtel Parc Saint-Séverin

The Rue de la Parcheminerie owes its delightful name to the parchment makers, masters of parchment, who settled in this neighborhood along with public writers. Erudition is at the root of the oldest neighborhood in Paris, the Latin Quarter. Students and learners have always attended classes there, especially at the famous Sorbonne (1257). Not far away, the « great men and women of France » are celebrated at the Pantheon (Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Rousseau). To summon the spirit of the « lost generation » and encounter the soul of Hemingway, who frequented the area daily, head to Shakespeare & Company bookstore, the first English bookstore in Paris (1919), where you can find refuge and an incredible literary feast.

It is the spirit of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the exaltation of ideas, all gathered around a café table. Le Procope (1686), located on the Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, quickly welcomed the Parisian intellectual elite, including the encyclopedists Diderot and d’Alembert, as well as Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Comédie-Française troupe, who only had to cross the street to step onto the stage. In the 19th century, the iconic literary cafés Les Deux Magots (1885) and Café de Flore (1887) took their place, nearby, in the heart of the neighborhood, attracting Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, and later Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir (the couple made Café de Flore their « headquarters »), Hemingway, not to mention the surrealists Breton and Aragon. Existential debates, feverish writing sessions, and now prestigious literary prizes - the Prix de Flore since 1994 and the Prix des Deux Magots since 1933 - are the legacy of an extraordinary intellectual life and vitality. It will be delightful to come for a coffee and summon the voices of the past once again and read today’s writers.