Road Test

Crossing Paris on Rues St-Martin and St-Jacques

One afternoon on the rooftop terrace of the Centre Pompidou I gazed beyond the Plexiglas tubes and primary-colored pipes at the people beetling along Rue Saint-Martin, the straightaway edging the center’s plaza. How many of them, I wondered, realized they were walking on part of Paris’ oldest street, the north-south axis the Romans called cardo—as in cardinal points? This cardo is older even than Rome, archaeologists claim. It lies atop the Bronze Age trade route that linked northern Europe via Lutèce—the Celtic settlement of the Parisii tribe—to the Mediterranean.

I admit up front that I’m a road warrior, a Roman and pilgrimage route aficionado. In 2006 my wife Alison and I walked 1,100 kilometers across France. Not that I want to boast, but I happen to know that while all roads lead to Rome, some, like Rue Saint-Martin, are definitely more direct than others.

Entering Paris from the north and what’s now Saint-Denis, this buried ancestor of roadways runs underneath Rue Philippe de Girard, changes names half a dozen times and leaves town heading south past the Cité Universitaire. Well, until Pompidou built the Boulevard Péripherique it did. Now the road deadends into the beltway—and metaphorically goes underground.

Ever practical, the Romans straightened and paved the long-beaten Bronze Age path. In the Middle Ages pilgrims adopted it, renaming the Left Bank portion in honor of Saint-Jacques-le-Majeur—Saint James the Greater. Starting in the 9^th century, his sanctuary in Compostela, near Spain’s Atlantic coast, became Christiandom’s third-most popular pilgrimage destination after Rome and Jerusalem. Thousands of questers for over 1,000 years caressed The Way of Saint James with their clogs. It’s hard to imagine how many blisters this road has engendered.

For a lark, before we set out across France, Alison and I test-drove our boots on Paris’ cardo. It turned out to be a day-long, 10-km saunter down the city’s long memory lane. Ours started as all good hikes start with coffee and croissants—at Gare de l’Est. Why there? Simple: the train station sits astride the ancient highway, its rails teasing out the lay-lines. North of it there’s nothing much to see. But from here south things get interesting. If we’d been sipping coffee on the spot in, say, 52 BC, we might’ve seen Julius Caesar pursuing a Parisii. Okay, Caesar didn’t usually do the skewering himself (he delegated), and coffee and croissants weren’t around yet. Life wasn’t worth living.

We made our first stop across from the station at 148 Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Martin. In the early 1600s Marie de Médicis waved her wand and created the Récollets convent here. It was ransaked by Revolutionaries, and went from barracks to weaving-works, hospice to military hospital then squatter’s paradise. Some of the cloister disappeared in 1926 with the new Avenue de Verdun. Other chunks were swallowed by the expanding Gare de l’Est. Long a moody place, nowadays it’s home to the Maison de l’architecture, with working spaces and apartments for visiting architects. Beyond the freshly restored colonnaded front, in a quiet courtyard we discovered Café de la Maison. Had we known it was here, we might’ve skipped the station’s paper cups.

Just yesterday in historical terms—meaning 1844 and 1852—when the Grand Boulevards and train stations were being built, workers unearthed the northern roadbed of the cardo, from Pont Notre-Dame to Boulevard de Magenta and the Square Saint-Laurent. Like its layer-cake roads, Paris’ churches also sometimes sit atop ancient sites—temples to Earth goddesses, Celtic dieties and of course Roman gods. About fourteen hundred years ago Grégoire de Tours mentioned a Saint-Laurent chapel on the Roman road right here. With this in mind we strolled into the Renaissance nave of Saint-Laurent, a hodgepodge whose homely façade and neo-Gothic belltower date to 1862. Candles flickered, a symbolic link, perhaps, to the Merovingian monks buried beneath circa 550 AD. Their tombs were discovered in 1680. But lower strata are older—much older.

In his Conquest of Gaul, Caesar mentions the Gauls’ fine roads—news to most contemporary readers. Rome demanded standardized straightaways 9-meters wide, allowing chariots to pass unimpeded—forebears of our “dual carriageways” and Interstates. So Roman engineers improved as they conquered. No surprise then if Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin runs straight and true from Saint-Laurent through the three-arched, 1674 Porte Saint-Martin, a Roman-style triumphal gateway celebrating French victories in Besançon and Limburg. It’s said Louis XIV fancied himself the divine-right heir of the Emperors, and here, sculpted on the north entableture, he appears in Roman garb. We walked through and stared up: on the south side the Sun King is Hercules, wearing little other than a big wig.

Rue Saint-Martin runs south from the arch, the concentration of historic sites on it increasing as it nears the Seine. The Arts et Métiers conservatory and museum, housed in the former Saint-Martin-des-Champs abbey, was tempting—Martin reportedly worked miracles here in 385 AD. The astonishing library is in a reconverted 13^th-century refectory designed by the same architect who created the Sainte-Chapelle. We wandered through it and atmospheric courts, but knew we’d need several hours to wrap our heads around the 1,600 years of history and the museum displays, from steam engines and scientific instruments to Foucault’s pendulum. So we ambled on to Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, just beyond Rue de Turbigo. This unsung church surprised us with a spacious deambulatory for pilgrims.

It’s challenging to keep on the cardo’s straight and narrow. Nearby streets beckon. For instance, three blocks further south at #51 Rue de Montmorency stands Paris’ oldest house, from 1407. It’s raked backwards from sculpted stone foundations, and has been remodeled too many times to count. Here lived Nicolas and Pernelle Flamel, the rich booksellers it’s said were alchemists. They underwrote the construction of the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie’s northern portal.

François Mitterrand obsessed about the east-west “Power Axis” from the Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre. Georges Pompidou, a classical scholar before entering politics, preferred the Celtic-Roman-Pilgrim’s axis. Buildings on Rue Saint-Martin fronting the Pompidou are a mere 400 years old. Two blocks south, though, Saint-Merri plunges its foundations into late Antiquity, when the church of Rome upheld the Empire by converting “Barbarians” into Catholics. Saint-Merri subsumed an older chapel, the resting place of Carolingian miracle-worker Médéric, later shortened to Merri. Rebuilt three times in its first 1,000 years, the current church is late-flamboyant Gothic, from 1520-60. Gargoyle spouts stared down at us. We listened to an organist practicing then hit the road again.

The vestigial Tour Saint-Jacques is still under restoration, wrapped in tattered tarps and scaffolding. Another flamboyant Gothic wonder, this time from 1509-1523, it towers over Rue Saint-Martin and Rue de Rivoli. The church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie that used to be attached to it was quarried during the Revolution. It was from this compound that pilgrims set forth, crossing Pont Notre-Dame en route to Chartres, Orléans and Spain on the ancient road. Those Celtic merchants of old—dealers primarily in tin—weren’t so lucky. Around 1000 BC they started crossing the Seine in dugouts, or waded across natural fords on the north and south sides of Ile-de-la-Cité. The Celts tossed up rickety footbridges in Lutèce’s latter days. Rome transformed them into Paris’ first permanent spans. Rebuilt a dozen times, the Petit Pont has bridged the same spot from island to Left Bank, with variations on the name “little bridge,” for over 2,000 years.

We’d only walked a hundred yards up Rue Saint-Jacques when we reached the churches of Saint-Séverin and Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. Both have 6^th-century pedigrees as sanctuaries. Each is worth a patient visit. Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre seemed a must: not only are there three holy water fonts shaped like pilgrim’s shells. Better still, the small church’s foundations and forecourt wellhead sit on Roman paving stones, lifted from the crossroads of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue Galande—Paris’ other major Roman road that branched east to Lyon.

Just as exciting was what we discovered at #21 Rue Saint-Jacques: a sculpted 1500s doorway, pocketsized courtyards, an 18^th-century house, and spiraling stairwells guarded by plump cats. In the courtyard of nearby #67 we found another sculpted door and balcony.

Rue Saint-Jacques climbs past the Sorbonne and ungainly Lycée Louis-le-Grand. At the top of the rise we stopped for the view back, trying to imagine the ancient city. A few paces away, a plaque at #14 Rue Soufflot marks where the 13^th-century Jacobins convent once stood. Ironically it lent its name to a university department where, 500 years later, revolutionaries met.

For a millennium—from the Merovingians to the Revolution—this area was studded with churches, monuments and private mansions and ringed by walls. The carriage door at 151 bis Rue Saint-Jacques, a Louis XV townhouse restored in 2006, stood open. We helped ourselves. In the courtyard looms an impressive house with a horseshoe-shaped staircase, curving balconies and sculpted grotesque faces.

The Roman aqueduct from Arcueil to the baths at Cluny flanked the cardo for much of its length. Sections were revealed here in the 1890s and again by excavations in 2006. The road narrows briefly to pre-modern dimensions. At #172 another plaque recalls the Saint-Jacques gate in the Philippe Auguste walls, demolished in 1684. Curving Rue des Fossés Saint-Jacques marks the path of the moat.

We tracked back and forth across the street, admiring the gilded grillwork at Au Port Salut, a 1700s travelers and pilgrims’ inn, still here and in business. Still carved on the heavy door of #169 are scallop shells, usually an indication that the property’s owner had walked to Compostela and back. Another kind of throwback in this high-rent district is #179: a mechanic’s garage fills the cavernous courtyard.

The narrowest point in the cardo lies between #187 and #216—where writer Blaise Cendrars lived. I measured out six paces, making it even narrower than the Roman road. That’s because from the 1200s on, convents and abbeys colonized off-street lots. Private buildings shouldered in front along the roadside. We glanced up at the pitched roof of #208. The plaque once on #218 disappeared with the latest replastering, I guessed. In a long-gone, 1200s townhouse that once stood here, Jean de Meung penned the bulk of the medieval bestseller Roman de la Rose.

One of Paris’ stranger piles is the pseudo-Romanesque, rusticated Institut Océanique at #193, abutting Rue Gay-Lussac. When the road went through in the mid-1800s a Roman villa with thermal baths surfaced, reaching as far as #240. Ever curious, we explored courtyards not yet locked by Digi-codes. Instead of finding ancient mosaics we enjoyed unadulterated Parisian atmosphere—until ferocious concierges chased us out.

The trouble with walking the cardo is, there’s far too much to see in a day. Determined to make it across town nonetheless, we marched on, into the barn-like baroque Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, at #252. Though only from 1630-1685 this church evokes the Order of Alto Passo—Christian knights who in the 1100s protected pilgrimage routes linking France to Rome. Off the echoing nave we spotted a statue of Saint James. His wall-eyes followed us out.

The Paris headquarters of Alto Passo were a few yards south at #254. Above the carriage entrance is the insignia of the Commanderie du Haut-Pas. Many landmarks like it have disappeared, some as recently as the 1990s. The Ferme Saint-Jacques at #262, for instance, was replaced by an egregious eyesore; gutted, #289 became subsized housing; and #328 might just be the most egregious postmodern steel-and-granite bunker in town.

Happily others have survived. Courtyards, doorways and dormers—like those at #283 and #284—hint at days of yore. We were glad to see the former Benedictine Couvent des Anglais at #269-269 bis. “Schola Cantorum” is carved over the entrance. Dance, music and drama students came and went, seemingly oblivious to the corinthian columns, sweeping staircase and garden court.

Repaved and equipped with benches, the halfmoon plaza facing Val-de-Grace convent seemed a good perch. From it our eyes inspected the convent’s ironwork, forecourt flanked by square pavilions and immense baroque façade. We lucked out, wandering into a wedding ceremony. “A.L.” appears everywhere at Val-de-Grace, the initials of founder Anne of Austria and her husband Louis XIII. Saint Peter’s and the Chiesa del Gesù in Rome inspired the triple-aisle nave, soaring dome and Bernini-style Baldaquin. Dazed by an overdose of chapels, courtyards and architectural details we fled outside.

Rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques starts at busy Boulevard de Port Royal. Behind a smog-blackened old building and the Stalinesque Cochin medical school hides an arcaded cloister from 1625, these days part of the Baudeloque maternity ward. We sat amid clipped yew trees and heard the future of France wail.

The cardo’s last kilometers pack less charm per step, but we were pleased to remark l’Observatoire on our right and, kitty corner, the centuries-old Faculté de Théologie—a grimy, soulful address that seemed appropriate given the road’s pilgrim past.

“Saint-Jacques” is also a leafy boulevard and an early 1900s métro station sitting where the Faubourg becomes Rue de la Tombe-Issoire. As we walked toward Parc Montsouris, a lovely landscaped enclave, I remembered the origins of the street and park’s unusual names: beyond the city limits, tombs once lined the Roman road, and one of them supposedly contained the remains of a giant, Ysorre. The name morphed to Souris and Issoire, and who knows what happened to the tombs and skeletons.

Beyond the Vanne reservoir and university greenbelt, the cardo-cum-Way-of-Saint-James becomes a potholed offramp from the Boulevard Péripherique. On it cars roared three-abreast in both directions. Saint James might not have approved, but I couldn’t help thinking Julius Caesar would’ve loved it.