Atypique apartment - Saint-Germain des Prés

A chic, clean station, with plenty of coffee shops and fancy restaurants nearby. It feels pretty safe around here, even at night.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés is one of the four administrative quarters in Paris's 6th arrondissement, around the church of the former Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The River Seine forms its northern edge; its other boundaries are rue des Saints-Pères to the west, the area between rue de Seine and rue Mazarine to the east, and rue du Four to the south. Residents are called Germanopratins. The quarter is known for cafés such as Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore, le Procope, and Brasserie Lipp, as well as many bookshops and publishing houses. In the 1940s and 1950s it was a center of existentialism, associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The École des Beaux-Arts and Musée national Eugène Delacroix, located in the painter's former apartment and studio, are also here. Until the 17th century, the land here was prone to flooding from the Seine and remained mostly open fields, or Prés, which gave the quarter its name. The Benedictine abbey at its center was founded in the 6th century by Childebert I, son of Clovis I, who ruled from 511 to 558. In 542, while campaigning in Spain, he ended his siege of Zaragoza after hearing its people had placed themselves under the protection of Saint Vincent. The bishop of Zaragoza gave him the saint's stole, and on his return to Paris Childebert had a church built to house the relic. It was dedicated to the Holy Cross and Saint Vincent, on a site where it could be seen across the fields from the royal palace on the Île de la Cité. The church was completed in 558 and dedicated by Germain, Bishop of Paris, on December 23. Childebert died that same day. A monastery was built nearby, and the abbey church became the burial place of the Merovingian kings. Its abbots held spiritual and temporal authority over Saint-Germain residents until the 17th century. The monastery had a rich treasury and stood outside the city walls, so the Normans plundered and burned it in the 9th century. It was rebuilt in 1014 and rededicated in 1163 by Pope Alexander III to Bishop Germain, who had been canonized. The church and abbey buildings were rebuilt in stone around 1000 AD, and the abbey grew into an important center of learning. By the 12th century, a village of about 600 people had grown around it. Today's rue du Four follows the site of the monastery's old ovens, and its dining hall stood along modern rue de l'Abbaye. A parish church, Saint-Pierre, was also built on the left bank where the Ukrainian Catholic church now stands. Its parish covered much of today's 6th and 7th arrondissements. The fortifications of King Philip Augustus, built from 1358 to 1383 as the first walls to enclose the entire city, left Saint-Germain-des-Prés just outside them.

I'm Muslim, but this is a good place to feel close to God.

It feels like a mix of a museum and a subway station, and I like the colorful lights too!