The boulevard that runs from the Seine up past the Sorbonne to the Luxembourg — the main axis of the Latin Quarter, cut through by Haussmann and known for a century as the Boul'Mich. In Down and Out in Paris and London it is where a pair of Orwell's fellow lodgers ran one of the neatest frauds in the book.
The boulevard Saint-Michel runs south from the place Saint-Michel on the Seine, past the Sorbonne, to the Luxembourg gardens. It was driven through the medieval Latin Quarter as part of Haussmann's rebuilding, and for a century afterwards it was the students' street — bookshops, cheap cafés, and the crowd that made the quarter's reputation. Generations of Parisians called it the Boul'Mich.
In Down and Out in Paris and London it is a place of work, and the work is a swindle. George Orwell describes the other lodgers in his hotel, and among them the Rougiers — "an old, ragged, dwarfish couple who plied an extraordinary trade".
"They used to sell postcards on the Boulevard St Michel. The curious thing was that the postcards were sold in sealed packets as pornographic ones, but were actually photographs of chateaux on the Loire; the buyers did not discover this till too late, and of course never complained."
It is a small masterpiece of a paragraph, and it works because of where it is set. The Boul'Mich was crowded, it was where visitors and students mixed, and it was exactly the sort of street where a sealed packet could change hands quickly. The fraud is perfect: nobody who has been sold châteaux instead of pornography is going to complain to anyone about it.
Orwell's Paris pages are full of this — not misery alone, but the ingenuity that poverty forces. The boulevard is one of the places where the ingenuity happened.
The boulevard is driven through the medieval Latin Quarter under Haussmann.
Orwell's fellow lodgers the Rougiers sell sealed packets of "pornographic" postcards here.
Down and Out in Paris and London is published.
The main street of the Latin Quarter, running from the Seine past the Sorbonne to the Luxembourg gardens. It was cut through the medieval quarter during Haussmann's rebuilding and became the students' boulevard, nicknamed the Boul'Mich.
Orwell describes the Rougiers, an elderly couple lodging in his hotel, who sold sealed packets here as pornographic postcards. The packets actually contained photographs of châteaux of the Loire — and since nobody who had been swindled that way would admit it, the buyers never complained.
Yes, as the quarter's spine and a way into everything around it — the Sorbonne, the Panthéon, the Luxembourg. But be honest about what it is now: the student bookshops and cheap cafés have largely been replaced by chains, and the character survives more in the side streets than on the boulevard itself.
Setting of the story
Where the Rougiers, a couple lodging in Orwell's hotel, sold sealed packets as pornographic postcards that in fact held photographs of châteaux of the Loire — "the buyers did not discover this till too late, and of course never complained".
George Orwell wrote about Boulevard Saint-Michel in Down and Out in Paris and London.
The small Left Bank hotel on the quai Saint-Michel, facing Notre-Dame, where Godard shot the long bedroom scene of Breathless in Room 12. The hotel closed in 1993; the site is now the Hôtel Les Rives de Notre-Dame.
Visit the place
The attic room where Blaise Cendrars settled in 1912, back from New York — his home, the address of the one-man publishing house that issued La Prose du Transsibérien, and the room he came back to after losing his arm in the war.
Visit the place
George Whitman's bookshop by the Seine — opened as Le Mistral in 1951, renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964 with Sylvia Beach's blessing, and still sleeping writers among its shelves.
Visit the placeA royal chapel on the Île de la Cité, built by Louis IX in under seven years to hold the Crown of Thorns — a relic that cost more than twice what the building did. Its upper chapel has fifteen windows carrying 1,113 stained-glass scenes, two-thirds of them medieval. Open 9 a.m.–7 p.m. in summer and 9 a.m.–5 p.m. in winter; €16 for EEA visitors, €22 otherwise.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
