The Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Luxembourg Garden, located in the 6th arrondissement, was created in 1612 by Marie de' Medici, the widow of King Henry IV of France, for a new residence she constructed, the Luxembourg Palace. The 23 hectare garden today is owned by the French Senate, which meets in the Palace.
l'Eglise Saint-Sulpice, dedicated to Sulpitius the Pious, is the second largest church in Paris. The church is the second building on the site, erected over a Romanesque church originally constructed during the 13th century. Construction of the present building, the second church on the site, began in 1646. During the 18th century, an elaborate gnomon, the Gnomon of Saint-Sulpice, was constructed in the church.
The Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, just beyond the outskirts of early medieval Paris, was the burial place of Merovingian kings of Neustria. At that time, the Left Bank of Paris was prone to flooding from the Seine, so much of the land could not be built upon and the Abbey stood in the middle of meadows, or "prés" in French. The Abbey was founded in the 6th century by the son of Clovis I, Childebert I (ruled 511–558). Under royal patronage the Abbey became one of the richest in France, as demonstrated by its ninth-century polyptych; it housed an important scriptorium in the eleventh century and remained a center of intellectual life in the French Catholic church until it was disbanded during the French Revolution.
The Eiffel Tower was designed and built by the company of engineer Gustave Eiffel from 1887-89 as the entrance to the 1889 World's Fair. The 324 metre Eiffel Tower is the most-visited paid monument.
