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History

                                         Paris Latin Quarters, a townhouse built in 1792 and that has remained in the Family ever since, run by  Robert Reuter in the heart of the Latin Quarter. Here you will find us, perched on the slopes of St. Genevieve where the Pantheon dominates the hilltop and the bustle of cafe life and academia of the Sorbonne has thrived for centuries.
With 10 years experience in accommodating travelers to the best vacations of their lives, I look forward to making your upcoming trip comfortable and memorable.

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Superbly located on the corner of rue St. Jacques, the first Roman-built road...

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... in Lutecia​​​​​​​​​​, (as the Romans called the islands of Paris), the building's foundation stone work dates to the 7th century Roman Empire and is still apparent today. In the 16th century the Convent of the Order of the Ursuline Nuns was built upon this site,  its vaulted cellars still support today's structure, is part of the Ground Floor apartment and is listed in the Latin Quarter's historical archives. The current townhouse was built in 1790 after the French revolution by the Count de Briel and has been in the same family for over 220 years. During World War II, secret underground tunnels below the house linked the resistance movement to a network of passages to the nearby Val de Grace Cathedral in one direction and the Pantheon in the other. Today the townhouse has been restored to the historic splendour of the Directoire period of architecture and decoration. The house is located in the triad of the Pantheon, the beautiful Luxembourg Gardens and Val de Grace Cathedral, not to mention some of the most gracious, interesting, and well-known Left-Bank stores and restaurants.

Across the street are Louis XVI's School for the deaf, the birthplace of sign language.

​Where Beautiful Minds and History meet Night Life and Shopping addicts...

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Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève climbs up to the church of Saint Etienne du Mont, which houses the tomb of Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, who converted King Clovis to Christianity in the 5th century and is credited with miraculously saving the city from attack by Attila the Hun and his 700,000-strong army. It is a beautiful church, boasting the city's only surviving rood screen, as well as an ornate 17th-century organ and a collection of splendid stained glass windows from the 16th and 17th centuries, displayed in the Chapelle des Catéchismes. Both Blaise Pascal and Racine are buried at Saint Etienne.

Just to the left as you leave the church is the Panthéon, designed by the architect Jacques Germain Soufflot on a commission from Louis XV to fulfill a vow made when he was desperately ill. Converted into a mausoleum for the nation's heroes after the Revolution, the Panthéon houses the tombs of Voltaire, Rousseau, Soufflot, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, the elder Alexandre Dumas and Marie Curie, the first woman granted the honor of burial here. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, has only a plaque, because his body was never recovered after his plane crashed in the Mediterranean during World War II.

Just behind the Panthéon is the rue Descartes, where Ernest Hemingway rented a room to work in at no. 39 because he believed it had once been occupied by the poet Verlaine. Newly married to Hadley Richardson, Hemingway lived around the corner at 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine at the time. (Across the street, at no. 71, James Joyce was finishing Ulysses.) Hemingway also haunted the Place de la Contrescarpe, which was, according to George Orwell, a dreadful neighborhood where no policeman dared to venture on his own after dusk. Orwell lived at 6 rue du Pot-de-Fer in 1928. Today, the tree-lined Place is surrounded by upscale cafés. Off to one side rue Mouffetard is a popular market street, where the old church of Saint Médard provides a lovely backdrop to the colorful food stalls. The Mouff' market is open daily except Monday, but it's best on Sunday mornings, when local shoppers and street musicians combine to create a happy bustle. One music group, called Mouffetard Musette, hands out songsheets and invites everyone to join in, singing and waltzing in the street to traditional accordion tunes.

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