Oriented approximately along a north-south axis, it is positioned between Tolbiac on the one hand and Porte d'Italie (towards Ivry) or Le Kremlin-Bicêtre (towards Villejuif) on the other.

A gas cylinder placed in a trash can was discovered by a postman, but it exploded while the police set up a security perimeter; the toll was 18 injured.

[4][5] The place was chosen to reference the circumstances of the arrest of Khaled Kelkal, one of the main instigators of the RER B attack in Saint-Michel.

A few days earlier, on 29 September 1995, the police had shot Kelkal during his arrest at a place called Maison Blanche, near Vaugneray (Rhône).

[6] As part of RATP's Renouveau du métro renewal program, the station corridors and platform lighting were renovated on 4 October 2006.

The design of the station is entrusted to the consortium led by the engineers SETEC TPI and SYSTRA as well as to Mark Wilson of the Groupe-6 architecture firm.

[16] Californian artist and environmentalist sculptor Ned Kahn created an art installation overlooking the station in coordination with Mark Wilson.

[17] The work called River of Air is made of stainless steel and flexible sheets of ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene) which will wave and reflect the sunlight above the two of the station entrances.

The station is served by line 47 and by the urban service La Traverse Bièvre Montsouris of the RATP Bus Network.

The station serves as the backdrop for an important scene from Günter Grass's novel The Tin Drum (1960), in which the hero, Oscar Matzerath, sees the inspectors coming to arrest him as he walks towards the exit using the escalator.