Petit-Montrouge

Still at this site today is a building in the French Directory architectural style, which was the old city hall annex of Montrouge (44, rue Du Couédic, 48°49′48″N 2°19′51″E / 48.83006°N 2.33088°E / 48.83006; 2.33088).

Many plots were built only in façade, leaving the place for city houses or artists' workshops, often adorned with private gardens, invisible from the street.

Certain streets, like Rue Bezout, form an authentic architectural museum offering to the visitor a variety of styles, sizes, eras of construction, and volumes.

These groups of people arrived in the neighborhood during the Renovation of Paris, led by Napoleon III and the architect and urban planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann.

The class that suffered most in the past from the medieval living conditions of old Paris was exiled to the suburbs by Haussmannization, since the slums were cleaned up and replaced by apartments for the bourgeoisie.

It is today particularly sought-after because of its numerous stores, its parks, its atypical architecture, and the absence of large HLM (rent-controlled housing) complexes.

The major tourist attraction is in fact underneath the quartier, since the section of the Catacombs of Paris open to the public is between Place Denfert-Rochereau and Rue Rémy Dumoncel.

The Ateliers catholiques, a publishing house and in its final years the largest privately held printing press in France, was founded in Petit-Montrouge in 1836 by the priest Jacques Paul Migne.

This firm published numerous religious works in rapid succession and at modest prices, ensuring their wide circulation to the lesser clergy and the laity.