Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
On the face of the Palais de Luxembourg opposite number 36 Rue de Vaugirard
is mounted one of the two last survivors in Paris of the 16 marble meters issued by
the revolutionary government between February 1796 and December 1797 as a
public reference standard, propagating the meter to practical use. The other is at 13
Place Vendôme, on the right bank outside the Ministry of Justice near the Ritz
Hotel. (There is a similar meter standard in Lyon outside the Hotel de Ville.
Another is preserved in the Mairie (Town Hall) of the town of Croissy-sur-Seine
(78 Les Yvelines); there is a modern replica on the wall of the Rue du Metre at the
intersection with the Rue des Ponts, the D321).
Panthéon
It is convenient and interesting at this point in the walk to detour to the Panthéon,
east of the Jardin du Luxembourg and on the other side of the Boulevard St. Michel.
Originally the building was created by Louis XV as a church dedicated to Ste.
Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris. It was completed in 1790 but was then taken
over by the revolutionaries as a Temple of Reason and became the secular resting
place of France's great men and women - statesmen, generals, admirals, and intel-
lectuals like Voltaire, Pierre and Marie Curie. The huge dome now contains a
Foucault pendulum, a replica of the one that Arago helped Léon Foucault to install
here in 1851.
St. Germain
Northwest of the Jardin du Luxembourg is the Church of St. Sulpice where the
astronomer Pierre Le Monnier installed the
meridiana
(see Chapter 6). The Place de
St. Sulpice outside the Church is an area of highly fashionable apartments and cafés.
The St. Germain area stretches from here to the River Seine, centered on the Place
du St. Germain-des-Prés on the Blvd St. Germain (Medallions Numbers 64-65 on
opposite sides of the Blvd St. Germain west of Rue de Seine). This area was the
intellectual center of Paris, and the haunt of poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud,
philosophers Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, singer Juliette Greco and writer
Simone de Beauvoir, as they drank, talked, sang, scribbled their masterpieces on
coffee-tables and in garrets, and made love. Jazz clubs concentrate in Rue St. Benoit
and art galleries in the Rue de Seine and Rue des Beaux Arts, near the École
Nationale Supérieur des Arts, Paris' main school of fine art. Now boutique fashion
shops are taking over from the bookshops, but although its character has gentrified,
St. Germain still retains a rather cultivated version of its traditional atmosphere.
The meridian runs along the Rue de Seine, crossed by the street market in Rue
de Buci. Medallion Number 66 is just off the Rue de Seine in the Rue des Beaux
Arts, outside an art gallery.
