Into a Paris Quartier

I’ve never met Diane Johnson, author of Into a Paris Quartier: Reine Margot’s Chapel and other Haunts of St.-Germain and Le Divorce, but we do have something in common; we both love Paris. And while I’ve only ever dreamed about walking by the Seine and eating croissants at cafe’s in the famous walking city, Johnson lives it. She splits her time between San Fransisco and Paris and Into a Paris Quartier is her own love letter to the beauty of the city. For Johnson, the history and architecture is part of what makes Paris so special to her. It’s rich past is embedded in every part of the present- you can’t escape it. Janet Flanner, the New Yorker correspondent, wrote, “The streets sing, the stones talk. The houses drip history, glory, romance.”

In Johnson’s introduction, she writes that “the City of Light has haunted the American imagination from the days of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.” Johnson is just another American that has fallen under the influence of the city’s allure. Johnson’s apartment is on Rue Bonaparte in the historic and famous neighborhood of St.-Germain-des-Pres. Jefferson lived just a few doors down two hundred years earlier and Franklin just around the corner. The spirit of Sartre, Beauvoir, Wilde, Piaf and Wharton still vibrate around every corner.

From her apartment window, Johnson can see an old chapel built by Queen Margot in 1608 and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. She is a stone’s throw from Louvre, the Insitut de France, the Pont Neuf and other famous landmarks. Every building has a story, a rich history. The influence of great figures in history are in the streets they walked and they linger in the buildings they built.

Johnson begins her book with a question: What is it about Paris? Into a Paris Quartier is Johnson’s own search for what Paris means to her- what it is that keeps her coming back every year- what made her fall in love with the city and consider it home.