Paris Saint-Germian-des-Prés Tour

On this walking tour lasting approximately two and a half hours, a local guide will take you on a detailed tour of Paris’s most chic neighbourhood. In a group of no more than eight people – which you can join on your own or with others – you’ll wander its streets to soak up its history, as well as its flavours.

One of the great Parisian pastimes is sitting on a terrace and watching the world go by, and the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighbourhood is renowned for its famous cafés. In this district, you can visit the first Parisian café and the oldest in France, Le Procope, which opened in 1686. Its clientele included such notable figures as Balzac, Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin.

On Boulevard Saint-Germain, you’ll also find two iconic venues, Café de Flore and Café des Deux Magots, which served as meeting places for intellectuals, politicians and artists, and were frequented by figures such as Hemingway, Rimbaud, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés is an intellectual and chic neighbourhood, where art galleries sit alongside luxury boutiques. Here you’ll find the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where Monet, Degas, Delacroix and Renoir studied, and the Eugène Delacroix National Museum, housed in what was his home at the time of his death in 1863. He lived here because he needed to be close to the Church of Saint-Sulpice, whose chapel houses his paintings and features in the film *The Da Vinci Code*. Here you will also find the oldest church in Paris: the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, built in the 6th century, where the remains of the philosopher Descartes lie.