Saint Séverin and Saint Julien le Pauvre

I'd read about a couple of very old churches on the Left Bank, Saint Séverin and Saint Julien le Pauvre, so we headed over on a cold but sunny December morning. We started at Place du Châtelet, a place that's very dear to us because it's right where we stayed in the summer of 2010 when we came to Paris for the first time with the kids.

Place du Châtelet is a square built under Napoleon III. The square is named after the Grand Châtelet, an ancient fortress (destroyed under Napoleon I) that was located there and guarded the northern end of the Pont au Change. In the center there's a beautiful fountain decorated with sphinxes and a tall column that was erected to celebrate Napoleon I's victories. At the top of the column is a gilded figure of the goddess Victory holding a laurel wreath in each hand.

Next to this square is Tour Saint Jacques, which is all that remains of the 16th century Church of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie, which, like many churches in Paris, was desecrated and looted during the French Revolution (this one was completely destroyed). The ancient church and its tower welcomed pilgrims headed to the major pilgrimage destination of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Crossing the Seine at this point always offers a great view of the Conciergerie, a former royal palace initially known as Palais de la Cité, the seat of the medieval kings of France, and much later a prison during the bloody Reign of Terror (where many were held before going to the guillotine, including the infamous Marie Antoinette).

The square tower on the left is the Tour de l'Horloge, or Clock Tower, which received the first public clock in Paris in 1370. In the center, the twin round towers used to command the entrance to the royal palace. The tower on the right, the Bonbec ("good beak") Tower, obtained its name from the "robust" way of interrogation that was practiced there, in which victims were encouraged to "sing." The Concierge, or keeper of the royal palace, gave the place its eventual name.

Just a bit downriver is the north span of the Pont Neuf, and further west the dome of the Invalides and the Eiffel Tower appear in the background.

Saint Séverin is located on the crowded Rue Saint Séverin, so crowded that there's no room to take a good picture. It's one of the oldest churches that remains standing on the Left Bank, built and rebuilt in stages since the 6th century on the site of an old oratory built over the tomb of Saint Severin, a hermit who spent much of his life praying and meditating, and who influenced many Parisians to become his disciples and live a life of piety and humility, among them Clodoald—the Merovingian prince son of Clodomir and grandson of Clovis I, King of the Franks—who renounced all claims to the throne and lived as a studious hermit, and eventually became Saint Cloud.

The church was destroyed in the 11th century by the Vikings, and in the 13th century the bell tower and the first three bays of the nave were rebuilt and the rest in the second half of the 15th century. One of its bells, cast in 1421, is today the oldest in Paris. Saint Séverin is also known for its unique palm tree-shaped pillar in the ambulatory and its crazy gargoyles.

Just down the street is Saint Julien le Pauvre, one of the city's oldest religious buildings. It was built in stages from the 12th to the 19th centuries, and in 1889 was granted to the Eastern Catholic Melkite community. Not sure what those orange palm trees across the street were about, but they sure looked awkward in the middle of December.

Saint Julien le Pauvre does not look like your typical Paris church and is quite a contrast with its imposing neighbor just across the Seine, Notre Dame de Paris, which next year celebrates its 850th anniversary and will get a new set of bells.

Saint Julien shares a city block with the Square René Viviani, home of the oldest tree in Paris, a locust tree planted in 1601.

Just off Square René Viviani is Shakespeare and Company, an English-language bookstore George Whitman, an American, opened in 1951 as Le Mistral. Whitman later changed his store's name to Shakespeare and Company in tribute to the original Shakespeare and Company, another English-language bookstore opened by Sylvia Beach in 1919. Many writers and artists of the "Lost Generation," such as Hemingway, Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein, spent a lot of time there; James Joyce used it as his office. Beach initially published Joyce's book Ulysses in 1922, which was banned in the US and in the UK. 

The original store closed in 1940, during the German occupation. The new store still operates as a bookstore and a reading library, and is frequented by Anglo tourists (and will be even more, since it was featured in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris).

Many of our walks end up in neighborhood restaurants, of which there a million in Paris. This is one of the things I love about this city, that you don't have to think about where to eat because no matter where you are you'll find a nice café, bistrot, or brasserie. And despite being an expensive city, you can have a low-budget lunch if you go with an item on the menu of the day. After our walk we had lunch at Peres & Filles, a quaint restaurant on Rue de Seine we had read about on someone else's blog, which we loved and look forward to going back to.

And on the way to our metro station we stopped for a picture at Le Procope, the famous cafe and brasserie founded in 1686 and called the oldest restaurant of Paris. It was the meeting place of the intellectual establishment throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, like Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, Balzac, and Victor Hugo, as well as the U.S. founding fathers Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.