The story behind Rue Madame & Rue Monsieur in Paris
Tomas k - Senior News Editor 
Walking in Paris is like going on a treasure hunt, which is one of the reasons I love it so much. Many streets are named after someone important in French history, and street signs often give a little information about these figures.
For example: The plaque for Rue Monge, a street I know very well in the 5th arrondissement, is named after Gaspard Monge, a mathematician and one of the founders of the École Polytechnique outside Paris. You can see his title and birth/death dates below.
Rue Madame
After four years of coming and going from Paris, I had become very familiar with Rue Madame in the 6th arrondissement. It has a few great cafe-restaurants like Café Madame (on the corner with Rue Vaugirard), which I’d frequent in my early days here after class at the Catholic University. There’s also the Pont Traversé cafe across the street, another great place to grab a meal or coffee. Rue Madame is indicated with the blue line below, lying just west of the Jardin du Luxembourg:
It never occurred to me that Rue Madame was named after someone important. And it wasn’t until I walked on Rue Monsieur last week that I thought to do a little research and find out what these names are all about.
So here’s what I found:
Rue Madame is named after Marie-Joséphine de Savoie, princess of Sardinia — aka ‘Madame’ — because she was married to the brother of Louis XVI. She lived from 1753-1810. She and her husband had a troubled marriage and never had children, which always makes royalty twitch a little because who’s going to succeed the throne when they’re gone?
During the French Revolution, Marie-Joséphine went into exile, staying in several European cities to avoid the conflict back home. (Not sure if her husband was with her, but somehow I doubt it.) Her legacy is overshadowed by Marie Antoinette, so she isn’t as known or talked about in history.
Rue Monsieur
As I mentioned earlier, northwest of Rue Madame, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, I recently discovered Rue Monsieur. It’s actually a petit street but in a great part of the city, not far from Le Bon Marché department store.
Rue Monsieur was named after the husband of ‘Madame’, brother of Louis XVI as mentioned above. He was born Louis Stanislas Xavier de France in Versailles in 1755 and became ‘Monsieur’ after his brother became king.
He eventually became King of France himself, as Louis XVIII, after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte. (However, ‘Madame’ would never become queen — she died four years before he took the throne.) He lived from 1755 to 1824.
Rue Monsieur-le-Prince
Finally, we come to Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, at the heart of the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank of Paris. Now that I learned that Madame and Monsieur didn’t have children, for whom was Rue Monsieur-le-Prince named, I wondered?
Well, this is a totally different story altogether. Rue Monsieur-le-Prince was named after the Prince of Condé — the highest blood-ranked prince after the royal family. And it wasn’t just a single person, because there would be several Princes of Condé as the title was passed on.
The street Rue Monsieur-le-Prince is located near the Jardin du Luxembourg because it was once the location of the Condé family residence. But that was torn down in the 18th century.
But they were related!
So it turns out that when we’re talking about high-born French royalty and other prominent families, marriage alliances and blood relations were very important for the protection of the throne or at least the secure handoff to a prominent family (why do I feel like I’m using Game of Thrones speak?).
It turns out, in this case, that the sister of Marie-Joséphine, aka Madame, married a Prince of Condé. But the two families were also related by blood — cousins of some sort. So the bloodlines were pretty solid.
Sources:
Wikipedia: Rue Madame (in French)
Wikipedia: Louis XVIII (in French)
Wikipedia: Rue Monsieur-le-Prince (in French)
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