A church has existed on this site in the Latin Quarter since 452 AD but that first church was destroyed by the Vikings in the 885-886 siege. This church, Saint-Germain des Pres, bears witness to a prestigious abbey founded in the 6th century; and the tall bell tower is the original entrance dating from the year 1000. The oldest church in Paris, this is what remains of a once sprawling and high-ranking monastery.
Built in the fields (pres) just beyond the outskirts of medieval Paris (and outside the Philippe Auguste wall), you can still find some traces of the connection between the church and the rest of the Abbey. One Abbey building remains, the Abbot's red brick residence, which you can see from place de Furstenberg. The church, which was the burial place of Merovingian kings (those graves were later plundered), was built in the Romanesque style. This means it has round (not pointed) arches above the aisles; and the interior is still painted in the medieval manner, as were Notre-Dame and others. The murals were done in the 19th century by the French painter Flandrin and you can still see some original stained glass windows. You can find the tombs of, among others, Descartes and John Casimir (Jan Kazimierz), a Polish king--only their hearts are here now.
Saint-Germain des Pres sits in its own square and and gave its name to the lively Saint-Germain-des-Pres area that developed around the abbey. It faces the famous café, les Deux Magots, where many authors and intellects have hung out for decades (Hemingway, de Beauvoir, Sartre, Picasso, etc.) By the way, the word magots means Chinese commercial agents and there are two (deux) statues of the agents hanging on the wall in the café. 
Le Café de Flore sits next door to les Deux Magots and across the street from Brasserie Lipp, the café where Hemingway wrote much of “A Farewell to Arms.” The church and the cafes sitting on the Boulevard Saint-Germain make this a very lively corner on the Left Bank.
Notice the interesting sculpture rising out of the square across from the church.
