You arrive at the Montparnasse train station and see "Montparnasse-Bienvenüe" on the subway sign. You might think it was a warm welcome: in reality, it's a posthumous tribute. In 1933, the station then known as Avenue du Maine (line 5 at the time) was renamed Bienvenüe, in tribute to Fulgence Bienvenüe, the legendary Breton engineer of the Paris metro. And that diaeresis on the u is no spelling curse: it's just his real name. Nothing to do with a sudden burst of hospitality!
Who is Monsieur Bienvenüe, after whom the metro station is named?
If you take the Paris metro on lines 6, 13, 4 or 12, you may have already got off at Montparnasse-Bienvenüe station, where you usually stop to enter the Montparnasse station in the south of Paris. But why call the station that? [Read more]
As for Montparnasse, the name that today evokes the station, the tower and the neighborhood, it comes from... a pile of sand and rubble! That's right. In the 17th century, students from the Latin Quarter would come to declaim their verses on an artificial mound formed by rubble evacuated from Paris. As a tribute to their lyrical flights of fancy, they named the mound Mont Parnasse, in reference to the Greek Mount Parnasse, the mythical home of the Muses in mythology. Poetic, isn't it? Although the mound disappeared in the course of construction, the name has remained.
Montparnasse and Bienvenüe stations were originally separate, located on different lines. It wasn't until 1942 that they merged, thanks to a (not so short...) corridor, and became the hub we know today. A small bust of Bienvenüe sits proudly here: although he may not be enthroned on Olympus, the "god" of the metro watches over its tunnels.
Montparnasse-Bienvenüe station hides its name well. It's neither a word of welcome, nor a Hellenic summit, but a pair of names full of history. A nod to a brilliant engineer and a legendary pile of sand. How to make every correspondence a little more... inspiring?
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Who is Monsieur Bienvenüe, after whom the metro station is named?
