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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)