Read the Signs: Rue Vaugirard in Paris

Paris’s longest street, and its even longer history

The rue de Vaugirard starts at boulevard Saint-Michel, outside the Sorbonne University, and travels westwards across two arrondissements to end at the Porte de Versailles, tracing its way along 4km of central Paris.

Since the 16th century, its layout has corresponded to what was the route from Philippe Auguste’s university to the village of Vaugirard, from where it gets its name.

It is narrow and inauspicious until it reaches its first major landmark, the Palais du Luxembourg, built here on the site of a 16th-century mansion to be the royal residence of Marie de’ Medici, the mother of King Louis XIII. The Palais became a prison during the French Revolution and then, in 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte transformed it into the Senate, the higher chamber of the French Parliament, a function it retains to this day.

From France Today magazine

Read other installments in our “Read the Signs” series:
Read the Signs: Rue du Croissant in Paris
Read the Signs: Rue Cler
Read the Signs: Allée Sonia Rykiel in Paris
Read the Signs: Rue Crémieux in Paris
Read the Signs: Place de l’Europe- Simone Veil in Paris
Read the Signs: Boulevard Haussmann in Paris
Read the Signs: Rue du Chat qui Pêche in Paris
Read the Signs: Rue des Mauvais Garçons in Paris
Read the Signs: Avenue de Champagne
Read the Signs: Rue du Temple in Paris
Read the Signs: Rue Guy-Môquet in Paris
Read the Signs: Rue des Francs-Bourgeois in Paris
Read the Signs: Boulevard Diderot in Paris