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Cour de Rohan and Cour du Commerce-Saint-André

Oldest Paris · 6th arrondissement

Cour de Rohan and Cour du Commerce-Saint-André

A cobbled passage of revolutionaries and medieval wall, and beyond it three quiet courtyards with the last mounting block in Paris.

Photo: Philippe Alès, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

The cour du Commerce-Saint-André was opened in 1776 hard against what was left of Philippe Auguste’s wall, linking the neighbourhood of Saint-André-des-Arts with the Odéon quarter. It is a cobbled lane of low shopfronts with a glass roof over part of it, and it carries more of the Revolution per metre than any street in Paris. Marat moved the presses of his paper, L’Ami du peuple, to no. 8 for a time. Danton lived at no. 20, a house that vanished when the boulevard Saint-Germain was extended through the quarter. The café Procope, founded in the late seventeenth century and a haunt of the philosophes, has a back door on the passage.

At no. 9, the German harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt had his workshop, and it was Schmidt who built the first working guillotine in 1792. Local tradition says he tested it here on sheep, with Dr Guillotin, whose name it took, watching from a window. The trials that are documented took place on corpses at Bicêtre; the sheep in the courtyard are a story that may be true, but no contemporary source we found confirms it.

The passage runs along the filled-in ditch of Philippe Auguste’s wall, built around 1200, and inside the premises at no. 4 the remains of one of its towers can still be seen. The wall also explains the cour de Rohan next door: it closed one side of these courtyards until 1791, when it was cut through to make a way in.

'Rohan’ is a corruption of ‘Rouen': the archbishops of Rouen had their Paris house here. The three small courtyards existed before the sixteenth century, and a building at no. 3 is attributed to the reign of Henri II. Tradition says it was built for Diane de Poitiers; that cannot be confirmed. In one of the courtyards stands a pas-de-mule, an iron tripod step that helped riders into the saddle, said to be the last in Paris. The painter Balthus had his studio here from the mid-1930s.

What to look for

  • The remains of a tower of Philippe Auguste’s wall inside no. 4.
  • No. 8 and no. 9, the addresses of Marat’s press and Schmidt’s workshop.
  • The pas-de-mule, the iron mounting tripod in the cour de Rohan.
  • The old well with its pulley in the courtyards, and the bollards that protected the porch from cart wheels.
Photo: Atget, Eugène (Jean Eugène Auguste Atget, dit)..., CC0, Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

  1. c. 1200Philippe Auguste’s wall built across the site (uncertain date)
  2. 1776Cour du Commerce-Saint-André opened
  3. 1791Medieval wall cut through to open the cour de Rohan
  4. 1792Tobias Schmidt builds the first guillotine
  5. 1889Remains of the wall listed as historic monuments
  6. 1987Shopfronts, entrances and glass roof of the passage listed

Plaques within 250 m

  • 126 Boulevard Saint-Germain · 50 m
    GILBERT CESBRON / 1913 - 1979 / ECRIVAIN / VECUT ICI DE / 1954 À 1979
  • 51 Rue Saint Andre Des Arts · 60 m
    Café Procope. Ici Procopio del Coltelli fonda en 1656 le plus ancien café du monde et le plus célèbre centre de la vie littéraire et philosophique au 18e et au 19e siècles. Il fut fréquenté par La Fontaine, Voltaire, Les Encyclopédistes, Benjamin Franklin, Danton, Marat, Robespierre, Napoléon Bonaparte, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Gambetta, Verlaine et Anatole France
  • 14 Rue De L'ancienne Comédie · 60 m
    COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE/ANCIEN HÔTEL/DES COMÉDIENS ORDINAIRES/DU ROI/1689-1770
  • 49 Rue Saint-André Des Arts · 60 m
    SUR CET EMPLACEMENT / S'ÉLEVAIT L'HOTEL DE NAVARRE QUI FUT ENSUITE / LE SEJOUR D'ORLEANS / LOUIS XII / AVANT SON AVENEMENT AU TRÔNE/ L'HABITA JUSQU’EN 1484
  • 51 Rue Saint-André Des Arts · 60 m
    MAISON DE [ILLISIBLE] [NDLR : L’ELEPHANT SELON FICHIERS PREFECTURE] / CONSTRUITE PAR / COYCTIER / MEDECIN DE LOUIS XI / 1467
  • 5 Rue (Passage) De L'ancienne Comedie · 80 m
    LE 4 MAI 1999 / LE BANQUET DES POÈTES / CÉLÈBRE AU PROCOPE / LE CENTENAIRE DE LA NAISSANCE / DE MAURICE CARÈME / PRINCE EN POÉSIE / 1899 - 1999
  • 45 Rue Saint-André Des Arts · 80 m
    CRUE/JANVIER 1910
  • 10 Rue De L'eperon · 80 m
    Le poète / Théodore de Bainville / est mort dans cette maison / le 13 mars 1891

Commemorative plaques, Ville de Paris open data (ODbL); transcriptions as published, in French. 31 in all within this radius.

Sources

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