Hotel Cujas Pantheon

Since we were having our vt meet and greet at the Mad Maker Pub I decided to look in the area for accommodation. I had in mind a hotel within staggering distance :o)

Well I couldn't have picked better than the Hotel Cujas Pantheon one 2 doors up from the Mad Maker Pub. This accommodation is in a fantastic area in the Latin Quarter, close to transport, Luxembourg Gardens, Seine River, the Notre Dame, cafes and a convenience store close by.

The staff were very helpful and friendly. Bed was comfy and I was surprised that the room was a good size and even had a bath! I had heard that hotel rooms are small in Paris. The Hotel also had a lift and room had air conditioning - something not every hotel has in Paris.

Breakky was included in the cost and quite sufficient. And another thing is that the cost does not break your budget. We booked through booking.com so we did not need to pay until the day of our stay.

I totally recommend this hotel as a place to stay in Paris..... and when we come back we will be staying here again.

Directions: Near the Luxembourg Gardens. 5 minute walk to the Seine River. 2 minute walk to a convenience store. 2 doors away from the Mad Maker Pub.

This is a pleasant two-star hotel at a great location, on Rue Cujas, just off the Boulevard Saint Michel in the Latin Quarter. I booked months ahead of time because I knew some other VirtualTourist members would also be staying here, and in fact I had some very nice chats over breakfast down in the vaulted stone basement with Steve (stevemt), Dave (davesut), Ann (aussirose) and Ann’s husband Howard.

The street, and hence the hotel, were named after the humanist legal scholar and teacher Jacques Cujas (1520 – 1590), who for a while lectured on civil law at the Sorbonne in Paris. The name Cujas can apparently can be pronounced with or without the s in French.

The law library of the University of Paris is now on the same street, at number 2, and is called the Bibliothèque Cujas.

Second and third photos: In the (small but nice) lobby of the Hôtel Cujas Panthéon.

Fourth photo: Old oak beams in my room (just like in Germany). The hotel has been renovated and modernized, but they have left some of the old oak beams exposed to show that it really is an old building.

Fifth photo: On the front of the hotel is this plaque which reads: “Miklós Radnóti, 1909-1944, Hungarian poet, lived in this house in 1939.”

I later looked up Miklós Radnóti and found that 1939 was his last year of freedom, because as a Jew he was forced by the Nazis to work in labor camps and cooper mines.

In the words of the website The HyperTexts: “As the Nazis retreated from the Eastern Front and the Russian army approached, the Bor concentration camp was evacuated and Radnóti and 3,200 of his fellow internees were led on a forced march through Yugoslavia and Hungary. He was shot to death in November near the northwest Hungarian village of Abda, along with 21 other prisoners who, like Radnóti, were too weak to walk. The mass grave in which they were buried was exhumed after the war and Radnóti's last poems, describing incidents of the march, were found in his trench coat pocket by his wife. They were written in pencil in a small Serbian exercise book.”

(It turns out that in 1939 Radnóti didn’t really live in this hotel but rather next door at number 16, the Hôtel des Trois Collèges.)

Next review from September 2011: Webcafé near the Panthéon

Directions:
Vélib’ 5106
Just off Boulevard Saint Michel in the Latin Quarter
GPS 48°50'53.04" North; 2°20'31.63" East