Saint-Germain-des-Pres: Paris’s Rebel Quarter Audiobook (Free)

For quite some time, Saint-Germain-des-Pres is a stronghold of sans culottes, a refuge to artists, a heaven for bohemians. It’s where Marat printed L’Ami du Peuple and Thomas Paine wrote The Privileges of Man. Napoleon, Hemingway, and Sartre possess all called it home. Descartes can be buried there. Now bestselling writer and Paris expert John Baxter requires listeners on a narrative tour of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which is also where Baxter makes his house.

Tucked along the shores from the Still left Mortgage lender, Saint-Germain-des-Pres embodies so much of what makes Paris special. Its cobblestone streets and historic facades survive to this day, spared from modernization because of a quirk in their building. Traditionally cheap rents attracted outsiders and politics dissidents from the days of Robespierre to the pupil revolts of the 1960s. And its intellectual pedigree boasts such luminaries as Pablo Picasso, Arthur Rimbaud, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir, Gertrude Stein, and Albert Camus.

Part-history, part-guidebook, Saint-Germain-des-Pres is certainly a fresh take a look at one of the Town of Light’s most iconic quarters, and a delight for new vacationers and Paris veterans alike.