Paris’ Left Bank is one of the most historic neighborhoods in world history. From the Enlightenment philosophers who helped inspired the French Revolution to Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin and Simone de Beauvoir, this tour is a lively overview of modern European thought.
Beginning at the Eglise Saint Germain, we will visit the café where Rousseau and Voltaire extolled the virtues of coffee, just a few steps away from where the guillotine was invented. From there, we will discuss the Paris Commune, the modernists, and visit the original Shakespeare & Company as well as the apartment that Hemingway never mentions in A Moveable Feast. We will end our tour where we began, on the boulevard where James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Jean-Paul Sartre, and a little known theorist named Guy DeBord helped inspire the May 1968 Student Revolution.
2.5 hour tour + drink break at a café