Cité Universitaire: station history
Served by: RER B.
Did you know?
A RER B station in Paris's 14th arrondissement, opened in 1891 under the name Sceaux-Ceinture, when the Sceaux line was converted to standard gauge, by the Compagnie du Paris-Orléans. It lies in the Montsouris park, perpendicular to boulevard Jourdan. The original station was a large single-storey building of five bays; rebuilt shortly before 1937, it bears the signature of the architect Louis-Loÿs Brachet. Originally, the line crossed the Paris fortifications at grade.
Anecdote
All RER B trains stop there since the north-south interconnection with the SNCF in May 1981. On 16 December 2006, the Cité universitaire tram station (T3), in the middle of boulevard Jourdan, opened. An exit towards avenue Reille was requested in 2003, 2011 and 2019 by residents and the neighbourhood council, but the project under debate does not include it. Works to ease platform exits, very crowded at peak hours, were planned for 2019 to 2022.
Around Cité Universitaire
- Parc Montsouris, 300 m away — An English-style landscape park designed by Adolphe Alphand, dedicated in 1869 and finished in 1878. A one-hectare artificial lake is fed by a stream running over a cascade, both also artificial.
- Pavillon suisse (Le Corbusier), 400 m away — One of the first buildings Le Corbusier built in France, in 1933.