This remarkable color photo of a spot in the Latin Quarter (Paris)—the intersection of the
rue de l'Ecole-Polytechnique and the
rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève—was taken almost a century ago, in 1914:
Click to enlarge
The street names evoke famous edifices. The
Ecole Polytechnique, founded just after the French Revolution, has always been a temple of scientific research and education.
The entry into the Polytechnique is still much the same as in this old monochrome photo:
The school itself has now been relocated in Palaiseau, on the edge of Paris, and the old buildings have been taken over by the French Ministry of Research.
The
Montagne-Saint-Geneviève is a hill in the Latin Quarter that takes its name from the primeval patron saint of Paris,
Geneviève [423-512], who is said to have saved the city from being overrun by the barbarian Huns of
Attila. In her later years, Geneviève used to climb up a track (itinerary of today's
rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève) in order to pray in an abbey founded on top of the hill by
Clovis [466-511], the first Christian king of France, and his queen
Clotilde.
Saint Geneviève, King Clovis and Queen Clotilde.
Today, the only remnant of the original monastery that still exists is a splendid white stone edifice, referred to as the
Clovis Tower, in the grounds of a nearby school.
The school in question is the lovely and prestigious
Lycée Henri IV, where I spent three of my earliest years in Paris (from 1963 to 1965) working as an assistant teacher of English.
That marvelous period of my life in the heart of Paris (while residing at the
Cité Universitaire in the
14th arrondissement) marked my initiation into the French language, culture and traditions... and it was no coincidence that the 1965 semester culminated in my marriage to a French girl from Brittany,
Christine, and my decision to consider France as my adoptive land.
Let me return to the opening image of this blog post. The publication of that photo was accompanied by a recent image of the same spot, which hasn't changed a lot, visually, over the last hundred years:
Google Maps provided me with another view of this intersection, including a glimpse of the start of the block a little lower down in the
rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève:
In the company of staff from the Lycée Henri IV (including my friend
François Leonelli, now an honorary French prefect and—according to recent news—vice-president of Unicef France), the corner café with a red-brick façade was a regular haunt during those carefree days in the Latin Quarter.
The name,
Les Pipos, was an old-fashioned term for students of the nearby Ecole Polytechnique... more commonly referred to by means of a single capital letter:
X. I should explain that many of my students at the Lycée Henri IV were in fact "preparing" (as they say in French educational jargon) their possibly-forthcoming entry into the great X establishment.
I like to think that X marks this Latin Quarter spot—the intersection of the
rue de l'Ecole-Polytechnique and the
rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève—that symbolizes a far-reaching change in my existence.
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