La Rive Gauche (, The Left Bank) is the southern bank of the river Seine in Paris. Here the river flows roughly westward, cutting the city in two: looking downstream, the southern bank is to the left, and the northern bank (or Rive Droite) is to the right.
"Rive Gauche" or "Left Bank" generally refers to the Paris of an earlier era; the Paris of artists, writers and philosophers, including Pablo Picasso, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Henri Matisse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and dozens of other members of the great artistic community at Montparnasse. The phrase implies a sense of bohemianism and creativity. Some of its famous streets are the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Rue de Rennes.
The Latin Quarter is a Left Bank area in the 5th arrondissement, so named because originally Latin was widely spoken by students in the vicinity of the University of Paris.
Famous quotes containing the words rive and/or gauche:
“He looked as if he wished to rive new war material out of the wombs of the mothers.”
—Anonymous. Quoted in Ellen Key, War, Peace and the Future, ch. 9 (1916)
“A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the façade of his appearance.”
—Iris Murdoch (b. 1919)