Arrondissement 5
Numbers: 11, 16, 17, 22
Named after the 16th century lawyer, Jacques Cujas, who exceptionally refused to take sides in the century’s religious wars, the road runs next to the Sorbonne’s law faculty. Close to the Pantheon it was the scene of barricades in June 1848 and of particularly fierce fighting around ones erected during the bloody week that ended the Paris commune of 1871.
During the first decade of the 20th century the French police archives record that many exiled Russian revolutionaries. particularly those from Georgia, used to hang out at the restaurant at No. 11.
In the early 19th century the painter Jacques-Louis David had a studio in the closed and ruined Cluny College (roughly number 16) where over the following two years he painted Napoleon crowning himself in 1805.
On May 1 1898 Charles Péguy, Lucien Herr and Georges Bellais set up a socialist bookshop and publisher at No. 17. It became the headquarters of the Dreyfusard supporters. Within a year Herr had brought several other socialists together to form the Bookshop and Publishers New Society there. Those involved included Léon Blum, Hubert Bourgin, Albert Monot, Mario Roques, Désiré Roustan and François Simiand.
Number 22 is a café, now called the ‘Mad Maker’. Back in 1830 it extended to the corner of Boulevard Saint Michel and was called the Café Musain. This was where Auguste Blanqui organised the Société des Amis du peuple (The People’s Friends), the insurrectionary group that played a role in the July Revolution, les trois glorieueses.
When Victor Hugo wrote Les Misérables, he used this revolutionary sect as a model for an equivalent group behind the 1832 insurrection, the Amis de l’ABC. Their initiative, to begin the insurrection by raising the red flag during the funeral procession of the Republican leader General Lamarque, on June 5 1832, saw several hundred killed in just a few hours.
