Rue de la Harpe, Paris

Rue de la Harpe

View northwards along Paris' rue de la Harpe.
Length	220 m (720 ft)
Width	12 m (39 ft)
Arrondissement	5th
Quarter	Sorbonne
From	31 rue de la Huchette
To	98 boulevard Saint-Germain
Construction
Denomination	Arr. préf. du 10 mai 1851, réunion de l'ancienne rue de la Harpe.

The rue de la Harpe is a street in Paris' Latin Quarter. Relatively calm and cobblestoned along much of its length, it runs in a south-easterly direction between the rue de la Huchette and the rue Saint-Séverin, where it turns south-west to where it ends at the boulevard Saint-Germain. It is a largely residential street; it is graced through its odd numbers (eastern side) with a few buildings dating from the Louis XV period, but buildings along the opposite side of the street are most all of a 'Haussmannian' style of a more recent stature. Its street-front commerces are varied to its southern end, but tend towards restaurants and the tourism trade towards the river. It appeared in the 19th century magazine, The Tell Tale, as the site of the murders which may have been the origin of the Sweeney Todd story.

Name of a 13th-century sign.

The rue de la Harpe below its twist to the west at the rue Saint-Séverin, dates from Roman times. Leaving Lutèce's (Roman Paris') main north-south thoroughfare just below the Petit-Pont it turned south to become a roadway parallel to the first known as the "via inferior" ("lower road"). Before it was cut short below the Boulevard Saint-Germain by the construction of the Boulevard Saint-Michel from 1859, it continued under more or less the same name until Paris' former 12th-century ''Porte Saint-Michel" gate at the corner of today's rue Soufflot and Boulevard Saint-Michel. The rue de la Harpe's 'newer' westward twist above the rue Saint-Séverin owes its existence to first a "bac" footbridge crossing the river from its end, then the construction of the first version of the pont Saint-Michel from 1378.