Early Royal History In its early history,
Faubourg Saint-Germain was an agricultural suburb of Paris, lying west of the historical
Saint-Germain-des-Prés urban district. In 1670,
Louis XIV began to build a grandiose hospital and retirement home for aged and unwell soldiers: the
Invalides. The king chose a site at the western end of the
Faubourg and commissioned
architect Libéral Bruant. The enlarged project was completed in 1676. Stretching 196 metres along the
Seine River, the complex had 15 courtyards, the largest being the ''
cour d'honneur'' ("court of honour") for military parades.
Jules Hardouin Mansart assisted the aged Bruant, and the chapel was finished in 1679 to Bruant's designs after the elder architect's death. The construction of the Invalides opened a new district to urbanizing, offering large empty spaces between the new monument and the old city limit. During the 18th century, French
high nobility started to move from the central
Marais, the then-aristocratic district of Paris where
nobles used to build their urban
mansions (see
Hotel de Soubise) to the clearer, less populated and less polluted
Faubourg Saint-Germain that soon became the new residence of French highest nobility. The district became so fashionable within the French
aristocracy that the phrase
le Faubourg has been used to describe French nobility ever since. The oldest and most prestigious families of the French nobility built residences in the area, such as the
Hôtel Matignon, the
Hôtel de Salm or the
Hôtel Biron.
The French Revolution Riots that occurred on September 14, 1788, instigated by the retirement of the publicly-hated, royalist minister
Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, resulted in troops being called into Faubourg Saint-Germain, and, according to
Peter Kropotkin, "in the Rue Mélée and the Rue de Grenelle there was a horrible slaughter of poor folk who could not defend themselves." During the
French Revolution, many of these
mansions, offering large reception rooms and exquisite decoration, were
confiscated and turned into national institutions. The French expression
"les ors de la Republique" (literally, "the golds of the Republic"), referring to the luxurious environment of the national palaces (official residences and institutions), comes from that time. One of the few
hôtels particuliers that was not confiscated was the
Hôtel de Besenval, as it belonged to
Pierre Victor, Baron de Besenval de Brunstatt, a Swiss military officer in French service.
The Restorations During the
restoration of the
Bourbon dynasty, the
Faubourg recovered its past glory as the most exclusive
high nobility district of Paris. Moreover, as home to the
Ultra-royalist Party, it was the political center of the country. The Ultra pushed towards counter-revolutionary laws, reinforcing the Catholic Church's power (
Anti-Sacrilege Act) and enacting the '''' (literally, the "Law of the Billion to the Emigrants" [meaning "Exiles"]), which allowed the French nobility to return from exile and compensated them for their loss of fortune and land in the Revolution. However, after the fall of
Charles X in 1830 during the
July Revolution, the district lost most of its political influence. During the
July Monarchy, from 1830 to 1848, when the junior
Orleanist branch held the throne, the
Faubourg was politically
marginalized, many
noble families withdrawing from active participation in political life to their
châteaux in the countryside and their
hôtels particuliers in Paris, urban mansions in the
Faubourg and led a passive but brilliant social life.
"The world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain" of this era appears in
Marcel Proust's epochal novel series
In Search of Lost Time as "the world of Guermantes" –
The Guermantes Way (Le Côté de Guermantes) is the title of the third volume. The figure of the
Duchess of Guermantes is inspired by the real countess
Élisabeth Greffulhe. Proust depicts this exclusive "world" in all its facets, as well as the (mostly futile) efforts of social climbers (like himself) to penetrate it. The
Nouveau riche had no access to this society. The families of the
Ancien Régime even looked down on the
Nobility of the First French Empire, the Napoleonic nobility, in the period before the
First World War. Thereafter, the
Faubourg remained the center of French
upper class social life. Nowadays, the
Faubourg – as with the rest of the
7th arrondissement – is still one of the most exclusive districts of Paris. ==Geography==