Sepia-tinted photographs of a Latin Quarter paralysed by protest are now half a century old. Mai 68 is still regarded as the biggest upheaval to have hit modern French society – and it has forever recast the tree-lined boulevards of Paris’s fifth arrondissement as the embodiment of France’s famous spirit of rebellion.
Jean-Paul Sartre roused students, nurses, doctors and teachers into a frenzy of protest from his crudely constructed pulpit under the oak trees of the Boulevard Saint Jacques, demonstrators lobbed cobblestones over barricades by the elegant arches of the Sorbonne, and the noise of rioting echoed through the dome-like Pantheon.
