From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The arrondissements of Paris with the river Seine bisecting the city. The Rive Gauche is the southern half.

La Rive Gauche (The Left Bank) is the southern bank of the river Seine in Paris. Here, the river flows roughly westwards, cutting the city into two: the Rive Droite (Right Bank), to the north and the Rive Gauche (Left Bank), to the south.

"Rive Gauche" or "Left Bank" generally refer to the Paris of an earlier era; the Paris of artists, writers and philosophers, including Pablo Picasso, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Henri Matisse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and dozens of other members of the great artistic community at Montparnasse. The phrase connotes this sense of bohemianism and creativity. Some of its famous streets are the Boulevard Saint-Germain, Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Rue de Rennes.

The phrase has also become a name for a particular lifestyle, fashion or "look". In 1966, Yves Saint-Laurent launched a ready-to-wear line by the name Rive Gauche. The collection was an attempt to democratize fashion, introducing elements of garments of the lower classes into high fashion.

The Latin Quarter is a Left Bank area in the 5th arrondissement, so named because originally Latin was widely spoken by students in the vicinity of the University of Paris.

See also

• Arrondissements of Paris

From Wikitravel

This article is a disambiguation page. If you arrived here by following a link from another page you can help by correcting it, so that it points to the appropriate disambiguated page.

The Left Bank in travellers' terms generally refers to the "Left Bank" (French, Rive Gauche) of the River Seine in the French capital city of Paris.

The Left Bank defies precise definition but generally refers to those arrondissements (districts) on the southern bank of the river as it flows though central Paris:

• the 5th arrondissement - the "Latin Quarter" and the Sorbonne
• the 6th arrondissement - St Germain-des-Prés
• the 7th arrondissement - the Eiffel Tower and its surroundings

Extending beyond being a simple geographical region, the Left Bank has become a byword for a particular style of life, fashion, or "look", with connotations of high style, the avant-garde and intellectualism.

The Left Bank is mirrored by the term Right Bank, referring to arrondissements north of the river within central Paris, the general meaning of which contrasts strongly with that of the Left Bank.