Rue de L'Abbaye - History

History

The Benedictine abbey was founded by Childebert, son of Clovis, in 543 to house relics brought from the siege of Saragossa the previous year. These included the tunic of Saint-Vincent and a cross of gold from Toledo; in consequence, the church and abbey were originally known as Saint-Vincent and Sainte-Croix. The church was founded somewhat later in 557 by Germain, Bishop of Paris, who was buried there in 576. A small market town grew up around the religious centre which became a place of pilgrimage and whose name changed to Saint-Germain-des-Prés ("of the meadows") in the 9th century. The Merovingian kings of France were also buried here — the tombs all disappearing during the French Revolution.

Around 1000 a new Romanesque church with three bell towers was built. Two of these were knocked down in 1821 due to their state of decomposition from the saltpetre in the gunpowder stored there during the French Revolution. The third bell tower still remains.

The abbot's palace (Palais Abbatial), commissioned by Charles de Bourbon in 1586, is still occupied (Nos 1-5). The abbot's garden also exists to this day and was the scene of one of the most sombre episodes of the French Revolution, the September Massacres of the 2nd to 5 September 1792.

The street was built in 1800 by driving a way through the abbey grounds which had been taken over by the new Republic. The old refectory and part of the chapel were destroyed in the creation of the street which was initially known as rue de la Paix, became rue Neuve de l'Abbaye in 1809 and settled on its current name in 1815. As recently as 1951, that portion of the original street between Rue Bonaparte and Rue Saint-Benoît was renamed Rue Guillaume Apollinaire after the poet Guillaume Apollinaire.