Begin the museum tour and you’ll soon find yourself mesmerised by L’ge d’Airain (The Bronze Age), so realistic it caused a scandal in 1877, when officials refused to believe it wasn’t cast from life. A little further along, in Rodin’s old studio, you’ll come to Le Baiser (The Kiss), one of his most celebrated sculptures; a marble rendition of forbidden love and unrequited passion, inspired by his relationship with fellow sculptor Camille Claudel. She never visited here — the couple had come to a shattering break by the time Rodin moved in — but Claudel’s presence is powerfully felt. Ascend those lovely stairs, and you’ll find yourself lured to her room, and to some of her smallest, yet most compelling works. This is where Claudel whispered her true force, in Les Bavardes (The Gossips) and La Vague (The Wave), sculptural gems carved masterfully from rock-hard onyx.
The art in this museum is so unexpectedly full of force that you might well need a breather afterwards. Fortunately there’s a delight of a garden in which to while away the afternoon. No longer the wistfully overgrown tangle that once reminded Cocteau of a Perrault fairytale, it’s now immaculately manicured, with carpets of emerald lawn, clipped hedges and a profusion of hydrangeas. It’s quintessentially Parisian, artistic on many levels. Rodin’s labour-of-love, La Porte de l’Enfer (The Gates of Hell), stands in dramatic contrast to a neatly trimmed rose-edged parterre; his famous Le Penseur (The Thinker) ponders among the topiaries, the gilded cupola of Les Invalides and the tip of the Eiffel Tower also piercing the skyline; and bronze likenesses of authors Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac stand dramatically amid the lindens and chestnuts. Rodin has been called a sculptural Impressionist, for the way he attempted to capture light in the twists and turns of his work. He was certainly a Naturalist, obsessed with the details of reality. ‘To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature,’ he once proclaimed. So it seems perfectly fitting that many of his works should be out in the open, the day’s ever-changing light giving his art further dynamism and dimension, making it seem as alive as the surrounding greenery.
Academic painters aside, most of the great French masters took time out to smell the flowers. You realise this at another artist’s museum, just as gorgeous, albeit on a smaller scale: the Musée Delacroix. To get there — a walk of about twenty-five minutes — head east along Rue de Varenne, north along Boulevard Raspail (if you want to revisit the art of Aristide Maillol one day, the Musée Maillol is just to the left on Rue de Grenelle) then right onto Boulevard Saint-Germain; when you reach the Église Saint-Germain-des-Prés, walk by its front door to Rue de l’Abbaye, turning right to get to Rue de Furstemberg. Up ahead is one of the most charming of all Parisian nooks, Place de Furstemberg. In the middle of this roundabout of a ‘square’, four towering paulownias stand around an elaborate five-globed lamppost. In the springtime, the trees bloom with a symphony of purple, trumpet-shaped flowers, but in any season, Place de Furstemberg has a perennial elegance.
Walk through the carriage door at no.6, into the cobbled courtyard of an old stable, and then up a narrow ladder of stairs — here you’ll find the former quarters of Eugène Delacroix, unassumingly refined for the man behind so many epic works. Delacroix, lauded as a leading Romantic in the 1820s, moved here in 1857. He’d lived a large life, pouring his heart and soul into magnificent paintings rich in colour and exotica, and partying away with the Parisian glitterati. But here, for the last years of his life, is where he found calm and solace. Most of his personal belongings have gone, but his old rooms are decorated with a rotating roster of his art that’s on a more human scale — paintings but also pastels and drawings. One of his sketches, a study of flowers, shows a pansy, poppy and anemone. Again, it’s surprisingly sweet and, well, small, for such an icon as Delacroix. But the painter had, by this time, learned to smell those proverbial blooms. It was his great friend, author George Sand, who inspired him to fall in love with nature, while on holiday out at her country château. By not only stopping and smelling, but also painting, those flowers, Delacroix found a new passion in life.
Walk to the back of the museum, through the painter’s old library, and head down the back stairs. This is where Delacroix found happiness in his final years of life, not just toiling in his sun-drenched studio, but also lazing in the garden it overlooks. Having been recently redesigned in line with the painter’s original vision, the enclosure is part country garden, with hedgerow-trimmed paths, thyme-bordered flowerbeds and raspberry bushes, and part wooded wonderland, with ivy-draped trunks, thickets of wildflowers and fragrant roses. Relax on the bench encircling one of the old craning trees, or sit on a sun-soaked slatted chair by the old well, and gaze up to the multi-paned studio window.
It gives you an idea of the soul of Delacroix, who once mused, ‘The view of my little garden … always makes me happy.’ It was here he learned how to stop time, not just with grand historical scenes, but also by focusing from the bigger picture into the small details — the leaves and the petals. His expressive brushstrokes, his emphasis on colour … he was a budding Impressionist at heart, and before his time. Delacroix passed away, here, in 1863, just as Manet was unveiling Le Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe. Perhaps a little of Delacroix’s soul ended up in that lush, romantic scene.
The perfect way to end today’s tour, if the weather’s permitting and light’s lingering, is surely to dine al fresco. Take a table en terrasse at any of the cafés on the nearby Rue de Buci. Or, if you have the stamina, pick up some takeaway (Rue de Buci is also the go-to for traiteurs and boulangeries) and head back full-circle to the Tuileries to picnic by those Maillol statues, on the plush lawn. It’s your own déjeuner sur l’herbe. You even have the naked ladies.
Itinerary
• Shakespeare and Company: 37 Rue de la Bûcherie 75005; 10.00-22.00
• Shakespeare and Company Café: 37 Rue de la Bûcherie 75005; 09.30-19.00 (Monday-Friday), 09.30-20.00 (Saturday, Sunday)
• The Abbey Bookshop: 29 Rue de la Parcheminerie 75005; 10.00-19.00; closed Sunday
• Sorbonne: 17 Rue de la Sorbonne 75005; 09.00-17.00 (Monday-Friday)
• Panthéon: Place du Panthéon 75005; 10.00-18.00 (October-March), 10.00-18.30 (April-September); closed 1 January, 1 May, 17 June (morning), 14 July (morning) & 25 December
• Saint-Étienne-du-Mont: Place Sainte-Geneviève 75005; 18.30-19.30 (Monday, during school term), 08.45-19.45 (Thursday, Friday, during school term), 08.45-22.00 (Wednesday, during school term), 08.45-12.00; 14.00-19.45, Saturday, during school term), 08.45-12.15; 14.30-19.45 (Sunday, during school term), 10.00-12.00; 16.00-19.45 (Thursday-Saturday, during school holidays), 10.00-12.00; 16.30-19.45 (Sunday, during school holidays)
• Le Mouffetard: 116 Rue Mouffetard 75005; 07.30-23.00 (Tuesday-Saturday), 07.30-19.00 (Sunday); closed Monday
• Jardin du Luxembourg 75006: opens between 07.30-08.15 and closes between 16.30-21.30 depending on time of year
• Église Saint-Sulpice: 2 Rue Palatine 75006; 07.30-19.30
• Les Deux Magots: 6 Place Saint-Germain des Prés 75006; 07.30-01.00
• Le Pont Traversé: 62 Rue des Vaugirard 75006; 13.00-19.00 (Monday-Friday); 15.00-19.00 (Saturday); closed Sunday
• La Rotonde: 105 Boulevard du Montparnasse 75006; 07.15-01.00
• Le Select: 99 Boulevard du Montparnasse 75006; 07.00-02.00 (Sunday-Thursday), 07.00-03.00 (Friday, Saturday)
• La Coupole: 102 Boulevard du Montparnasse 75006; 08.00-23.00 (Monday), 08.00-24.00 (Tuesday-Friday), 08.30-24.00 (Saturday), 08.00-23.00 (Sunday)
• La Closerie des Lilas: 171 Boulevard du Montparnasse 75006; 12.00-14.30, 19.00-23.30
Identity is more than a genetic code. Who we are is also influenced by where we go, and whom we meet along the way. Which is why broadening our horizons, literally, expands those of the mind, too. But it’s not just the physical journeys we take in life that are important; it’s also the literary ones, the places we explore and the people we get to know in the pages of the books we read. George Whitman, the late proprietor o
f Shakespeare and Company, believed that books have the power to shape our very being. That expansive spirit is still alive and well in his beloved boutique, exploring which is itself an adventure akin to falling down a rabbit’s hole. You never know where your visit will take you — new genres and eras and worlds — and who you’ll be on the other side, as you leave with another identity-forging book, packaged up in brown paper.
When Shakespeare and Company opens, before the queues form and the selfie-takers set up in the semi-piazza out front, you can immerse yourself in the olde-worlde atmosphere of the seventeenth-century space, taking your time to poke around the crooked rooms and romantic nooks, lined with rickety, heaving shelves and tottering piles of books. Then, curl up for a while on a cushioned bench in the upstairs library, with its pinch-yourself view of Notre-Dame. Whitman organised the rooms — with evocative names such as the Blue Oyster Tearoom — to be like chapters in a novel, and the result is exactly what you imagine a goatee-adorned, paisley-velvet-jacket-wearing bohemian eccentric would create.
Whitman, who grew up in Massachusetts, opened his English-language bookstore, then called Le Mistral, in 1951. The former soldier had moved to Paris after World War II, initially to study at the Sorbonne, but found that he could parlay his book-buying obsession into a lucrative business opportunity. He offered board — a night in one of the makeshift beds in the store’s various corners — to aspiring writers in return for a few hours’ work; over 30,000 bibliophilic souls have called this place home at some time. Lauded authors like Anaïs Nin, Lawrence Durrell and Allen Ginsberg have also paid pilgrimage to this spiritual heir of the original Shakespeare and Company, opened in 1919 by another American expat, Sylvia Beach (at 8 Rue Dupuytren and then 12 Rue de l’Odéon in the 6th arrondissement; we’ll be near there later if you’d like to take yourself off on a detour). The first Shakespeare and Company, too, was a buzzy meeting place for word lovers and literary stars-to-be. Ernest Hemingway was one of the ‘bunnies’ (Beach’s take on the French word for subscriber, abonné) who came here to borrow books, and James Joyce was also a regular — Beach admired and supported him so much she took on the mammoth task of publishing Ulysses for him. After shutting up shop during World War II, Beach became such a devotee of Le Mistral that she gave Whitman her blessing to revive her legendary old boutique’s name.
Buy yourself a book. There’s a great range of reads set in Paris — may I suggest A Moveable Feast? (Seeing as we’ll meet up with Hemingway later.) Flick through your purchase in the Shakespeare and Company Café next door, while you treat yourself to breakfast (the avocado toast is highly recommended) or just a caffeine hit (the coffee and chai tea are among the best you’ll find on the Left Bank), amid a flurry of fellow bibliophiles. It’s in Paris, where boutique bookshops abound, that you have faith in the future of the written word, because France prizes authors. That’s partly why so many international authors have seen Paris as their second home, and set so many books in this city. But also, it’s hard not to wax lyrical when in Paris, a city of such exultant beauty that the senses are heightened and the imagination ignited. Of course, you also can’t beat Paris for literary inspiration; this was, after all, the home of Molière, Victor Hugo and Marcel Proust.
When you’re ready to follow your own personal plotline, head down Rue Saint Julien Le Pauvre, towards the adorable pair of old picture-book houses (one is the cream-puff store Odette, and if you’re tempted to buy a few choux à la crème, savour them in the park, Square René-Viviani, just to your left, by the city’s oldest tree: an acacia that dates from 1601). Turn right at Rue Galande, cross Rue Saint-Jacques into Rue Saint-Séverin, and skirt around the front of the church of Saint-Séverin. You’ll come to Rue de la Parcheminerie, a thirteenth-century street that once housed the city’s scribes and parchment sellers. Turn right to pass another popular Anglophone bookstore, The Abbey Bookshop, on the ground floor of a delightfully decorative eighteenth-century townhouse. At the end of this narrow street, you’ll come to Rue de la Harpe. Like many in the warren of streets around here, this strip is full of souvenir shops and souvlaki counters, but it was once the epicentre of bohemian Paris.
It was on this street that Henri Murger housed Musette, one of the stars of his 1851 book Scènes de la Vie de Bohème (Scenes of Bohemian Life), which would spin off into the opera La Bohème. Murger himself lived nearby with his real-life consumptive Mimi (and we’ll pass by there later). The author found inspiration in his friends, a motley crew of hopeful creatives who were all living the freewheeling, anti-establishment lifestyle that had come to be known as bohémien — the province of Bohemia thought to be the original home of gypsies. In doing so, Murger gave form to bohemians in popular culture — with their dishevelled but dandy clothes, wildly flowing hair and chilly garrets — and the romantic myth has endured to this day. We still believe that true artists need to struggle — ideally in Paris. Perhaps that’s why so many authors, from all corners of France as much as the world, have come to this city in their poor, formative years, to camp out in a cold attic, or in a corner of Shakespeare and Company. For all of Paris’s beauty, this city, it seems, can also teach a thing or two about pain and adversity, about finding your true self and voice, before you can emerge as a real artist, and deservedly revel in the riches of fame.
Mimi and Musette embodied the Parisienne of the time known as a grisette, so named for the grey-cloth dresses women in the Parisian dressmaking industry wore (remember Mimi and her freezing, embroidering hands?). Grisettes were the stuff of romantic fantasy for Paris’s bohemians; a sort of low-level courtesan, they were happy to be paid in trinkets and evenings at dancehalls, demanding no more because they accepted their fate: marriage to a working man, often back in the countryside. They were in Paris for a short time, but a good time, and they often shacked up with a dashing bohemian, in his early pre-fame days, or found a lonely university student who was looking for a dalliance before duty called him to his future, too.
It’s no wonder grisettes lived around these streets, because this has long been the central Parisian hub not only for boho types, but also students. At the southern end of Rue de la Harpe, you’ll find Boulevard Saint-Germain. Turn left then right at Rue de Cluny, passing the Musée National du Moyen ge. In medieval times, men from all over Europe pilgrimaged to Paris to study theology, law and medicine at the University of Paris, set up on the Left Bank by rebel scholars escaping the Cathedral School of Notre-Dame, and the clutches of the Church in general, which was losing its controlling grip over knowledge. The common lingua was Latin, which is how this area acquired its moniker of the Latin Quarter. It has long had a rowdy, if revered, reputation. Early lessons were held in the open air, in muddy fields, with hay bales for seats. At night, students caroused around the taverns, partaking in the fermented fruit of the vines that then covered much of this district. The original bohemians, perhaps? Student life was certainly a struggle, but it was also one that brought out genius. The Florentine Dante Alighieri was one of the quarter’s future stars; he studied here before going on to write La Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy).
Paris’s most celebrated university is just up ahead: the Sorbonne. Cross Rue des Écoles, and dog-leg right then left into Rue de la Sorbonne. At the gateway of no.17, the guards should happily let you into the courtyard, provided you have some photo identification on hand. The university can trace its history back to 1253, although sadly none of its medieval sprawl remains. At least you can admire the seventeenth-century chapel’s slate-and-stone dome; it was the first of its monumental kind in this city, and is a lesson in that elegant ornamentation that Paris does so well. The church, pilfered during the French Revolution, is deconsecrated; still, its presence seems proper in this secular city, where learning has long been a religion in itself.
Continue walking uphill, turning left at Rue Cujas, then crossing Rue Saint-Jacques, past the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, an illustrious secondary school that boasts Molière, Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo among its
alumni. It’s around here that you well appreciate how inspirational it must be to study and start your working life in Paris, where genius is not academic but as real as the stones around you. The buildings of the Latin Quarter seem to especially vibrate with the energy of past souls and minds; to live with the ghosts of so many creative luminaries must be endlessly inspiring.
You’ll soon see another cupola, and another reminder that, in Paris, you are among greatness. The Panthéon is a neo-Classical-style temple that was built in the Enlightenment years as a replacement for the old Sainte-Geneviève Abbey (where the rebellious Pierre Abélard taught early in the twelfth century). Sadly, for Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, her new church was finished just as the Revolution broke out, and the new powers that be repurposed it into a mausoleum for illustrious Frenchmen; as the gold letters say at the top of the vast Corinthian portico: ‘To the great men, our grateful nation.’ Resting at peace here are Frenchmen from various fields (and even, now, five women — sacré bleu), including literary stars Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas père and Émile Zola. There’s something a little bleak about this super-sized sanctuary — most of its windows were blocked out for a fittingly sombre impact — and certainly the sepulchral crypt in the basement is rather gloomy (not that you’d expect it to be anything else, I guess). You should visit, nonetheless: the swirling mosaics and soaring ceilings make for an exuberant effect; the Foucault Pendulum is surprisingly beguiling, not to mention meditative; and if the colonnaded terrace of the dome is open, you’ll score yourself a stunning panoramic view of the Latin Quarter, and beyond.
Your visit to the Panthéon complete, make your way to the north-eastern corner of Place du Panthéon, towards the tiered wedding cake of a church. Saint-Étienne-du-Mont serves as the shrine for Geneviève. The golden filigree casket inside, fit for a Sleeping Beauty, is said to hold the saint’s remaining relics. It’s an appropriately feminine place in which to repose eternally. The creamy-stone vaults leap high above the luminous windows; enhancing the ethereal feel is the rood screen behind the altar, flanked by stairs that twirl up to a filigree balcony, the limestone of which has been carved so delicately it could be lace. One of the most beloved of Parisian churches, it has also long been the go-to for Parisian intellectuals (the believers among them, that is).
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