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Great Parisian Neighborhoods Series

Immerse yourself in the vibrant soul of Paris with this captivating series. Each installment delves into one of the city's iconic neighborhoods, uncovering their rich history, artistic legacy, and unique character. From bohemian haunts to literary sanctuaries, these books offer a vivid portrait of Parisian life and culture. It's an essential read for history buffs, art lovers, and anyone dreaming of wandering its storied streets.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Montparnasse
Montmartre

Recommended Reading Order

  1. 1

    Saint-Germain-des-Prés

    • 235 pages
    • 9 hours of reading
    3.8(21)Add rating

    For many years, Saint-Germain-des-Prés has been a stronghold of sans culottes, a refuge to artists, a paradise for bohemians. It's where Marat printed L'Ami du Peuple and Thomas Paine wrote The Rights of Man. Napoleon, Hemingway, and Sartre have all called it home. Descartes is buried there. Now bestselling author and Paris expert John Baxter takes listeners on a narrative tour of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which is also where Baxter makes his home. Tucked along the shores of the Left Bank, Saint-Germain-des-Pres embodies so much of what makes Paris special. Its cobblestone streets and ancient facades survive to this day, spared from modernization thanks to a quirk in their construction. Traditionally cheap rents attracted outsiders and political dissidents from the days of Robespierre to the student revolts of the 1960s. And its intellectual pedigree boasts such luminaries as Pablo Picasso, Arthur Rimbaud, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir, Gertrude Stein, and Albert Camus. Part-history, part-guidebook, Saint-Germain-des-Pres is a fresh look at one of the City of Light's most iconic quarters, and a delight for new tourists and Paris veterans alike

    Saint-Germain-des-Prés
  2. 2

    Montmartre

    • 256 pages
    • 9 hours of reading
    3.9(109)Add rating

    In the second portrait of his series Great Parisian Neighborhoods, award- winning raconteur John Baxter leads us on a whirlwind tour of Montmartre, the hill-top village that fired the greatest achievements of modern art while also provoking bloody revolution and the sexual misbehavior that made Paris synonymous with sin High on the northern edge of Paris, Montmartre has always attracted bohemians, political radicals, the searchers for artistic inspiration as well as those hungry for pleasure. In its winding, windmill- shadowed streets, which, only fifty years before, saw the anarchist rising of the Commune, Renoir, Picasso and van Gogh seized a similar freedom to remake painting, while, in the tenderloin of Pigalle, Toulouse-Lautrec drew the cancan dancers of the Moulin Rouge, celebrating a hedonism that titillated the world, In Montmartre , bestselling author and IACP Award winner John Baxter lifts the curtain on a district that visitors to Paris seldom see. From the tumbledown workshops of the Bateau Lavoir in which Picasso and Braque created Cubism to Clichy's Cabaret of Nothingness where guests dined at coffins under lamps of human bones, the whole of this mysterious enclave is ours to explore. For visitors and armchair travelers alike, Montmartre captures the excitement and scandal of a fascinating quarter that condenses the elusive perfumes, colors and songs of Paris.

    Montmartre
  3. 3

    Montparnasse

    • 242 pages
    • 9 hours of reading

    From bestselling Francophile John Baxter, the third book in his Great Parisian Neighborhoods series, offering tourists and locals alike a guided tour of Montparnasse

    Montparnasse