The 14th arrondissement is located on the Left Bank. It is mostly a residential and business area, but it has also traditionally been home to many artists as well as a Breton community. The district is divided into quarters: Quartier du Montparnasse, Quartier du Parc-de-Montsouris, Quartier du Petit-Montrouge and Quartier de Plaisance.
The 14th comprises the famous Montparnasse neighbourhood, which epitomises the spirit of the Left Bank. While today the district is a residential area, traces of its artistic past can be seen here and there. Painters such as Gaugin, Klee and Picasso, writers like Jacob, Apollinaire and Nin, and even Lenin and Trotsky used to live and work there.
While the current limits of the arrondissement were demarcated in 1860, the history of the 14th goes back much further, to the old villages of Montrouge and Gentilly. At the turn of the 19th century, a sizable Breton community arrived and settled in the district.
The fifty-third quarter is famously an artistic and intellectual neighbourhood. While its name points at Mount Parnassus in the Greek mythology and was given to this general area by students of the Latin Quarter, supposedly it was meant as ironic and referred to the pile of garbage that formed an artificial hill on the current crossroads between th
The fifty-fourth quarter is a quiet place to take a break from the more touristy parts of Paris. Its diverse architecture and green areas, including the eponymous Parc Montsouris, make for an interesting and relaxing stroll.
The fifty-fifth quarter owes its name to the adjacent commune of Montrouge, of which it formed a part before 1860. It is known as the quartier Alésia, from the name of a street that bisects it and from the principal Métro station that serves it, although the quartier Alésia does not exactly overlap the quartier du Petit-Montrouge.
The history of the fifty-sixth quarter dates back to the 19th century. Urbanisation influenced even this formerly rural area and several small businesses and workshops began to emerge.