The
Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés , just beyond the outskirts of early medieval
Paris, was the burial place of
Merovingian kings of
Neustria. At that time, the
Left Bank of Paris was prone to flooding from the Seine, so much of the land could not be built upon and the Abbey stood in the middle of fields, or
prés in French, thereby explaining its appellation.