Saint-Lazare: origin of the name and station history
Served by: metro lines 3, 12, 13 and 14.
Why this name?
The name comes from the Paris-Saint-Lazare railway station and rue Saint-Lazare, which formerly led to the old Saint-Lazare house. The station opened on 19 October 1904 with the first section of line 3; it is now served by lines 3, 12, 13 and 14, with eleven entrances. A corridor links it to Saint-Augustin, on line 9, and is part of the longest underground pedestrian connection on the network, between Opéra and Saint-Augustin.
Anecdote
The cour de Rome entrance is sheltered by « La Lentille » (the Lens), a glass pavilion designed by Jean-Marie Charpentier, 15.8 m in diameter and 4.3 m high. In the corridor to Saint-Augustin, the mosaic La Voix lactée by Geneviève Cadieux, installed in 2011, was given by the Société de transport de Montréal in exchange for a Guimard pavilion, now at Square-Victoria–OACI station on the Montreal metro. The line 14 mezzanine is designed like a clock face.
Audio guide
Saint-Lazare inspires many artists
The oldest of the Parisian stations opened in 1837 for the first French railway line, connecting Paris to the Pecq. Sensitive to its modernity, Claude Monet decided to paint it in twelve paintings under various atmospheric conditions. With today 100 million passengers per year, it is the 3rd largest train station in France.
When it opened in August 1837, the station served a single-track line to Le Pecq. The building we see today dates from 1889: it is the work of architect Juste Lisch. The station has 27 platform lanes, and a shopping mall with about 80 shops was set up in the passenger lobby in 2012.
Today, the station welcomes some 290,000 passengers every day.
Around Saint-Lazare
- Église de la Trinité, 500 m away — Built from 1861 to 1867 by Théodore Ballu in a neo-Renaissance style, it has a 65-m bell tower and a Cavaillé-Coll organ of 1869. Olivier Messiaen was its titular organist from 1931 to 1992.
- Gare Saint-Lazare, 210 m away — Paris's second-busiest railway station, frequently painted by Claude Monet in the 1870s.
- Printemps Haussmann, 300 m away — A historic department store known for its panoramic rooftop terrace overlooking Paris.