History
The current 6th arrondissement, dominated by the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés-founded in the 6th century- was the heart of the Catholic Church power in Paris for century, hosting many religious institutions.
In 1612, Queen Marie de Médicis bought an estate in the district and commissioned architect Salomon de Brosse to transform it into the outstanding Luxembourg Palace surrounded by extensive royal gardens. The new Palace turned the neighborhood into a fashionable district for French nobility.
Since the 1950s, the arrondissement, with its many higher education institutions, world famous cafés (Café de Flore, Les Deux Magots, La Palette etc.) and publishing houses (Gallimard, Julliard, Grasset etc.) has been the home of much of the major post-war intellectual and literary movements and some of most influential in history such as surrealism, existentialism and modern feminism.
Read more about this topic: 6th Arrondissement Of Paris
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—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
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—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)