The coloured interior
Blue, gold and red on the columns after restoration.
**The oldest church in Paris**, originally an abbey founded by King Childebert I in the sixth century in fields outside the city — hence the name: "Saint Germain in the meadows". The abbey was destroyed repeatedly in Viking raids and rebuilt, and the stone tower standing today is from the **eleventh century** — the oldest church tower in Paris, standing here a century and a half before Notre-Dame. In the Middle Ages the abbey became a major centre of scholarship with an enormous library, then the French Revolution partly destroyed it; it was used as a gunpowder store which exploded in 1794, burning what remained of the library. What surprises a visitor today is the **colour**: a major restoration completed in recent years uncovered the nineteenth-century wall paintings and returned blue, gold and red to the columns and arches — so the church is now brightly coloured, quite unlike what anyone expects who knows the grey churches of Paris. The philosopher **René Descartes** is buried here, and in front of it lie the square and the literary cafés that made the quarter what it is.
Blue, gold and red on the columns after restoration.
The oldest church tower in Paris — older than Notre-Dame.
The philosopher is buried inside the church.
Because it has been **recently restored** and its original colour returned. The Paris churches you know are dark grey because centuries of candle smoke and pollution coated their walls, and because many were never cleaned. Saint-Germain-des-Prés went through a long restoration that uncovered the **nineteenth-century wall paintings** beneath the layers and brought back deep blue, gold and red on the columns, arches and ceiling. The result surprises visitors and looks "new" — but is in fact much closer to how it actually was.
Saint-Germain-des-Prés was **the heart of Parisian intellectual life** in the mid-twentieth century: the cafés **Les Deux Magots** and the **Café de Flore**, directly opposite the church, served as Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus's office, and both still trade — but at **steep prices**, where you pay for the history rather than the coffee. Around them are bookshops, publishers, galleries and old shops, and the back lanes are far cheaper for the same coffee. Add the **church of Saint-Sulpice** and the **Luxembourg Gardens**, minutes away.
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