Our guides
Latin Quarter, Paris — which arrondissement is it in?
The Latin Quarter sits mostly in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, with a fringe in the 6th. How the two split our 110 hotels, and where each begins. Checked October 2026.
© Coyau, CC BY-SA 3.0 — Wikimedia Commons
The short answer
The 5th and the 6th arrondissements lie side by side on the Left Bank, south of the Seine. The Latin Quarter is mostly the 5th, and this is the reading that most visitors expect: the Sorbonne, the Panthéon, rue Mouffetard and the Jardin des Plantes are all in the 5th.
Photo: Rutger van der Maar, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Latin Quarter is not an administrative district, so no register gives its limits. The reference we checked on 4 October 2026 (Wikipedia) places it in the 5th and in the north and east of the 6th, around the Sorbonne.
How we drew the line
For our guide, the Latin Quarter is the whole of the 5th plus a strip of the 6th. The strip runs from the boulevard Saint-Michel west to the Luxembourg palace, and from the Seine south to rue de Vaugirard. In the other direction it stops at rue Dauphine and the carrefour de l’Odéon, which is the line our data draws towards Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Photo: Alexander Baranov, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Five addresses on the edge are marked as border cases in our data: the Relais Christine (3 rue Christine), the Hôtel d’Aubusson (33 rue Dauphine), the Hôtel Le Régent (61 rue Dauphine), the Left Bank Saint Germain (9 rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie) and the Relais Saint-Germain (9 carrefour de l’Odéon). All five are in the 6th. Of them, the Relais Christine presents itself as Saint-Germain-des-Prés, according to our notes.
What the split looks like
| 5th (75005) | 6th (75006) | |
|---|---|---|
| Open hotels in our base | 82 | 28 |
| Rooms | 3,062 | 1,008 |
| Five stars | 1 | 2 |
| Four stars | 30 | 11 |
| Three stars | 41 | 12 |
| Two stars | 6 | 3 |
| One star | 3 | 0 |
One further hotel in the 5th, the Cluny-Sorbonne, is absent from the Atout France list we read, so it has no classification here. Counts come from the Atout France register as read on 4 October 2026.
Where the boundary falls on the ground
The boulevard Saint-Michel does most of the separating, and the place Saint-Michel sits on it, about 350 metres in a straight line from the cathedral forecourt. The six hotels of our base on the boulevard itself (numbers 3 to 125) all carry 75005; the lanes to the west, rue Gît-le-Cœur, rue Danton and rue Saint-André-des-Arts, carry 75006. Our list of hotels near Saint-Michel takes both sides.
Further south the border runs towards the Luxembourg palace. The Panthéon is about 700 metres from the garden by our measurement, so the two monuments are less than a kilometre apart, yet they belong to different arrondissements. For the two sides in turn, see hotels near the Panthéon and hotels near the Luxembourg Gardens.
Photo: Chabe01, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The 5th arrondissement in figures
Wikipedia gives the 5th an area of 2.54 square kilometres and 55,252 inhabitants in 2023, which makes about 21,753 people to the square kilometre. It is made up of four administrative quarters: Saint-Victor (60.4 hectares), Jardin-des-Plantes (79.8), Val-de-Grâce (70.4) and Sorbonne (43.3), about 254 hectares in all. The Latin Quarter has no such register, which is why the postcode of a hotel, 75005 or 75006, is the nearest thing to an official answer. The district is served by metro lines 4, 5, 7 and 10 and by the RER B and C.
Which institutions lie in which arrondissement
According to Wikipedia, the 5th holds the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, the Cluny Museum and the Institut du monde arabe, as well as the Sorbonne, the Collège de France and the École normale supérieure. Our guides to the Natural History Museum, the Cluny Museum, the Institut du monde arabe and the Sorbonne therefore sit wholly in the 5th. The Luxembourg Gardens, whose guide is on the other side of the line, are in the 6th, as are the 28 hotels of our database with a 75006 address.
How our six areas sit across the line
Our six working areas follow the arrondissement boundary exactly, in our data at least. Five of them lie wholly in the 5th, and one wholly in the 6th:
- Sorbonne – Panthéon: 25 hotels and 961 rooms, all in the 5th. Twelve are four-star and ten three-star. See hotels near the Panthéon.
- Maubert – Notre-Dame: 24 hotels and 865 rooms, all in the 5th, with one five-star hotel. See hotels near Notre-Dame.
- Mouffetard: 20 hotels and 746 rooms, all in the 5th, 13 of them three-star. See hotels near rue Mouffetard.
- Saint-Michel: 8 hotels and 296 rooms, all in the 5th. See hotels near Saint-Michel.
- Jardin des Plantes: 5 hotels and 194 rooms, all in the 5th, the smallest of the six. See hotels near the Jardin des Plantes.
- Odéon – Luxembourg: 28 hotels and 1,008 rooms, all in the 6th, the largest of the six by hotels and by rooms, with two five-star hotels. See hotels near Odéon.
The median hotel has 36 rooms in the 5th and 31 in the 6th, and the largest of the 110 has 110 rooms.
Crossing the line on foot
Walking from the 5th to the Luxembourg Gardens, which are in the 6th, takes about 10 minutes from the three nearest guides of the 5th: the Cluny Museum is 593 metres in a straight line from the gardens, the Sorbonne 599 and the Panthéon 631. Saint-Séverin is 790 metres, or 13 minutes. These distances come from the coordinates of our guide data, with times by our method of 80 metres a minute over the straight line multiplied by 1.3. They show that the arrondissement line is an administrative fact, not a barrier: between these sights, crossing it costs a walk of about ten minutes.
Reading an address
The last two digits of a Paris postcode give the arrondissement, so 75005 and 75006 settle the question for any hotel. On the boulevard Saint-Michel the number does the same job: the odd numbers belong to the 5th and the even numbers to the 6th, according to Wikipedia. The six hotels we list on the boulevard, from no. 3 to no. 125, all stand on the odd side and carry 75005, while the streets to its west carry 75006. The postcode matters when a booking site lets you filter by arrondissement: a filter on the 5th alone leaves out the 28 hotels on the 6th-arrondissement side, which are also within walking distance of the Sorbonne.
Which stations for which side
On the 5th-arrondissement side, the core stations are on lines 10 and 7, with line 4 at Saint-Michel – Notre-Dame, whose platforms are closed until 19 December 2026, and the RER B and C stop on the same site. On the 6th-arrondissement side, Odéon is served by lines 4 and 10, and the Luxembourg stop of the RER B lies at the edge of the garden. For a visitor choosing a side, the figure that matters is therefore how many lines are within 500 metres rather than the number on the postcode.
Why it matters for booking
Searching only the 5th leaves out the 28 hotels of our base that carry a 75006 address, all on the Odéon and Luxembourg side. Our page on hotels in the 5th arrondissement keeps to the official number; this guide’s home page covers the whole area.