Notre-Dame-des-Champs: station history
Served by: metro line 12.
Why this name?
The station takes its name from rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, which owes its name to an old chapel that became in 1604 the convent of the Carmelites of the faubourg Saint-Jacques. It opened with the first section of Nord-Sud line A, between Porte de Versailles and Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, of which line 12 is the heir. It sits between Rennes and Montparnasse - Bienvenüe, near the Luxembourg gardens, the Zadkine museum and the Stanislas school.
Anecdote
It has regained its original Nord-Sud decor: brown ceramics with plant motifs and interlaced « NS » letters, under a semi-elliptical vault, and the line's former directions, Montmartre and Montparnasse, are inscribed on the tympana. In 2018, after France's World Cup win, it became « Notre Didier Deschamps » on temporary plates.
Around Notre-Dame-des-Champs
- Jardin du Luxembourg, 800 m away — A garden begun in 1612 by Marie de' Medici, around a palace she modelled on the Pitti Palace in Florence. It holds a small model of Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty, dating from 1870.
- Cimetière du Montparnasse, 600 m away — The second largest cemetery in Paris, the final resting place of Baudelaire, Sartre and Beauvoir.
- Tour Montparnasse, 400 m away — An iconic skyscraper offering one of the finest panoramas over Paris from its summit.