Paris: Englise Val-de-Grace
 

Has anyone visited Englise Val-de-Grace at 1 Place Alphonse-Lavern?

Located at the very south end of the Latin quarter. It's supposed to have a magnificant baroque facade and be the best preserved example of 17c architecture in Paris.

I show it near Port Royal - is that a metro or REF stop?

do you mean RER? It is one of those.

I've only been by it a lot as I used to go to school next door, but never did get around to seeing the inside. The outside is quite beautiful. They have some odd museum in there -- history of military medicine or something, and they have concerts in there fairly often.

christina, thanks for the info. I was going to either add it to a latin quarter walk or start around there and go into the luxembourg gardens.

Is there anything else around there worth taking a quick look at?

ttt

Not that I can think of. I suppose you could drop by my old school if you are interested in music, although there's not much to see. That is the Schola Cantorum at 169, St-Jacques just north of Val de Grace. It's a famous old conservatory where some good French composers taught (Saint-Saens, d'Indy).
The school building does have some history to it -- parts of it are very old and were originally a convent, parts were built by order of Louis XIV, and only in the 20th Century did it become a music school. I just took master classes there in the summer, though, I wasn't a regular student. Here's info on that www.schola-cantorum.com

It isn't really a beautiful building and is kind of falling apart, actually, so you'd have to just be into French classical music a lot to want to see the site for historical reasons. They do have a lot of free or cheap concerts there, however, and might have notices posted about that in the foyer or near the main doorway.

I think if you start from there and go towards Luxembourg Gardens, you'll see the observatory area at the end of the gardens, I find that worth seeing. I like the sculpture out on the grass and that marks the latitude of Paris and is one of the oldest observatories in the world, I think, if not the oldest. It doesn't function much as one anymore due to city lights, but they do have some exhibits in there occasionally and there are some old astronomical instruments and clocks on display. Public entrance is at 61, av de l'Observatoire and is only 4-5 euro. There is a special guided bisit once a month on the first Sat. but you might register for that. If you are very interested in science or astronomy, it might be worth dropping by
http://www.obspm.fr