| Just east of rue St-Jacques, and back towards the river, square Viviani – a welcome patch of grass and trees – provides the most flattering of all views of Notre-Dame. The ancient, listing tree propped on a couple of concrete pillars is reputed to be Paris's oldest, a false acacia brought over from Guyana in 1680. The mutilated and disfigured church behind is St-Julien-le-Pauvre (daily 9.30am–12.30pm & 3–6.30pm; M° St-Michel/Maubert Mutualité). The same age as Notre-Dame, it used to be the venue for university assemblies until rumbustious students tore it apart in 1524. For the last hundred years it has belonged to a Greek Catholic sect, hence the unexpected iconostasis screening the sanctuary. The hefty slabs of stone by the well at the entrance are all that remain of the Roman thoroughfare now overlain by rue St-Jacques. It's a quiet and intimate place, ideal for a moment's pause. A few yards from square Viviani, on the river bank, rue de la Bûcherie is the home of the American-run English-language bookshop Shakespeare and Co., haunted by the ghosts of James Joyce and other expatriate literati – though the original Shakespeare and Co, owned by the American Sylvia Beach, the long-suffering publisher of Joyce's Ulysses, was in fact on rue de l'Odéon. These days the shop is staffed by young Hemingways who sleep upstairs and pay their rent to George Whitman – the current owner and grandson of Walt – by manning the tills. More books, postcards, prints and assorted goods are on sale from the bouquinistes, who display their wares in green padlocked boxes hooked onto the parapet of the riverside quais – which, in spite of their romantic reputation, are not much fun to walk along because of the ceaseless road traffic. Continuing upstream to quai de la Tournelle, you can stop en-route at the Hôtel de Miramion (at no. 47), where the Musée de l'Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (Tues–Sun 10am–6pm; €4; M° Maubert-Mutualité) recounts the history of Paris's hospitals through paintings, sculptures, pharmaceutical containers, surgical instruments and so on. Though there are some beautiful old ceramic jars for recherché medicaments such as sang de dragon (dragon's blood), and a number of curious sentimental paintings among the portraits of medical worthies, it's better to press on as far as the tip of the Île St-Louis and the Pont de Sully for a dramatic view of the apse and steeple of Notre-Dame. From here, a riverside garden stretches to the east, dotted with modern sculpture.
| 
