It is situated in the 5th arrondissement, on the Left Bank of the Seine River, about 500 meters away from the Musée de Cluny and in the proximity of the Maubert-Mutualité Paris Métro station.

[1] "The poor" describes the modesty of the building, which makes it look very compact, compared with the contemporary cathedrals of the same style in the same region of Île-de-France.

[1] Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre replaced a 6th-century oratory dedicated to Saint Julien de Broude, which was part of a Merovingian hospice which sheltered pilgrims without funds.

[2][1][3][4] The earliest mention of such a site was found in texts authored by Gregory, bishop of Tours, who resided there in the 6th century during the rule of Chilperic I, king of Neustria.

[6] It is thirty years younger than the Saint Pierre de Montmartre church, the construction of the famous Gothic ambulatory of the Basilica of Saint-Denis lay between them.

[4] The only one of the city's twelfth-century parish churches to have endured,[4] it was never completed in its original design: the choir area was intended to be three stories high, and the clerestory is an incomplete triforium; the nave was supposed to be covered by sexpartite vaults, which were replaced by a wooden roof and, after the 17th century, by a new system of vaults; and, of a tower meant to stand on the church's southern side, only the staircase was begun.

[3] The church was closely associated with the nearby School of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, and then University of Paris, or Sorbonne College whose charter was confirmed by the Pope in 1215.

Deemed a "Dada excursion", the event involved writers Tristan Tzara, André Breton, Philippe Soupault, as well as artist Francis Picabia.

One must wash her breasts like she washes facecloths..."[8] The "Dada excursion", conceived as a manner to revive the public's awareness of Dada, failed to gain needed attention, and, together with a mock trial of reactionary writer Maurice Barrès held later in the year, helped create a rift between Tzara's group and the future Surrealists Breton and Picabia.

The remaining western window has been renewed, the surroundings suggest an older pointed arch, apt to the Gothic vaults of the aisle inside.

Vestiges of the gallery of the west facade are also still visible, as well as the rows of buttresses from the 12th century which still support the outer walls of the nave.

[10] The influence of Notre-Dame-de-Paris, built at the same time, is visible in the architecture of the interior of the church, particularly in the vaults and the columns and pillars in the nave and choir.

One 12th century column is decorated with sculptures of harpies, mythical half-woman, half-bird creatures popular in Romanesque architecture.