A Day in Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Exploring the royal city where Louis XIV and Claude Debussy were born

In March 2022, I visited Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It’s a ville royale, or ‘royal city’, a few kilometres west of Paris. It also has a direct train route to Paris, being the final stop on one fork of the RER A line.

Given its royal heritage and proximity to Paris, it’s quite a desirable place to live. A lot of well-to-do people like to live in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which combines the comforts and natural beauty of a country town with the dynamism of a big city. As Paris is only forty minutes away, you could easily work in Paris in the morning and then come back to Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the evening.

Not surprisingly, it’s also an expensive city to live in. Apparently, the average rent in Saint-Germain-en-Laye is as high or even higher than the rent in Paris. The town itself is really pleasant to walk around, although I did find that as a lot of shops sold luxury goods, there wasn’t much I…