The Abbaye-aux-Bois occupies the block between Rue de Sèvres and Rue de la Chaise, marked by high stone walls that hide its quiet courtyards from the street. Founded by Bernardine nuns in the seventeenth century, the convent became a fashionable refuge for noblewomen fleeing the upheaval of the French Revolution. Madame Recamier moved into a small apartment here in eighteen nineteen, and for thirty years, her salon drew the most prominent writers and politicians of the age to this secluded religious house.
Abbaye-aux-Bois
religious