I. SEINE LEFT BANK WALK
“The quais of the Seine, right and left banks, would be throughout my life my favorite walk,” wrote the Surrealist author Philippe Soupault. Few parts of the banks of the Seine as it runs through Paris are without interest, but the stretch between the Pont des Arts, opposite the Louvre, and the Pont de Sully, opposite the end of the Île Saint-Louis, is particularly rich in associations with the 1920s and 1930s. Leave Metro at Pont Neuf (Line 7). Also called La Monnaie (The Mint), this station serves the Hôtel des Monnaies, which directs the production of currency. Facsimiles of coins and medals and an antique hand press decorate the platforms.
La Samaritaine
Pont des Arts
Hours Press
15, rue Guénégaud
Pont Neuf
Statue of Henri IV
Place Dauphine
Home of Yves Montand and Simone Signoret
15, Place Dauphine
Papeteries Gaubert
28, Place Dauphine
Quai des Grands-Augustins
Desire Caught by the Tail
53b quai des Grands-Augustins
Pablo Picasso’s studio
7, rue des Grands-Augustins
La Perouse
51, quai des Grands-Augustins
Cabaret L’Écluse
15, quai des Grands-Augustins
Place Saint Michel
Theatre de la Huchette
23, rue de la Huchette
Brothel Le Panier Fleuri in The Last Time I Saw Paris
14, rue de la Huchette
Caveau de la Huchette
5, rue de la Huchette
La Grande Severine
7, rue Saint Séverin
Saint Julien le Pauvre
79, rue Galande
Shakespeare and Company
37, rue de la Bucherie
Start:
Métro at Pont Neuf
End:
Métro at Saint Michel
Exit Metro, line 7, Pont Neuf, onto Quai du Louvre.
1. La Samaritaine. This department store complex, named for a well that formerly stood on the site, was once the largest in France. It dominated the area from 1883, swallowing its neighbors and even extending onto the Seine with a floating health spa. Frantz Jourdain’s main building, built between 1903 and 1907, was reworked in 1933 by Henri Sauvage, who retained the Art Nouveau staircase and lofty atrium but redesigned the exterior in Art Déco style, using his signature structure of stepped-back tiers. Increasingly dysfunctional, the store closed in 2005. After modernization, it is planned to reopen in 2016 as a hotel and offices.
Turn right and continue on Quai du Louvre. Along this stretch of the river the body of the L’Inconnue de la Seine was found.
2. Pont des Arts. This metal footbridge, dating from 1804, originally had nine arches, but so many barges collided with the abutments that it was shut down for many years, then rebuilt in 1975 with only seven spans. It is popular with tourists for its views of the river, with artists as a venue for their work, and lately with lovers, who attach padlocks to its railings as tokens of affection.
In Jean Renoir’s 1932 film Boudu sauvé des eaux, tramp Michel Simon tries to drown himself here. It’s the setting for scenes in Claude Chabrol’s 1968 Les Biches and Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It figures in Philippe Soupault’s Surrealist novel The Last Nights of Paris. At the Left Bank end, a plaque commemorates the meeting in 1942 of writer Jean Bruller, alias Vercors, and Jacques Lecompte-Boinet of the anti-Nazi resistance in exile. Bruller gave him a copy of his novel The Silence of the Sea, the first title published by clandestine Editions de Minuit, to be taken to Charles de Gaulle in London.
Turn left and walk along the Quai de Conti, passing the Institut de France and Hôtel des Monnaies. Enter rue Guénégaud.
rue Guénégaud, Atget, 1908
3. In a storefront at 15, rue Guénégaud, between 1930 and 1934, Nancy Cunard ran the Hours Press, hand-printing limited editions of Samuel Beckett, Pablo Neruda, Laura Riding, Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and many others. (The street also contains a number of interesting small art galleries, rare book shops, etc.)
Return to Quai de Conti. Cross to Pont Neuf. Take left-hand sidewalk onto bridge.
Pont Neuf wrapped by Christo, 1985
4. Although “Pont Neuf” means “New Bridge,” this is Paris’s oldest, dating from 1578. It has been repeatedly repaired and reconstructed, but always using the original stones. Leos Carax took advantage of a period of repair to use it as a setting for his 1991 film Les Amants de Pont Neuf, but because of production delays, most was shot on a lake near Montpellier. In 1985, Christo used 40,876 meters of fabric and 13,076 meters of cord to wrap the bridge as a work of conceptual art.
View of the Pont Neuf, 1660s
5. The point of the island to the left, reached by steps behind the statue of Henri IV, is known as the Vert Galant, one of Henri’s nicknames. (A “Green Gallant” is a man who remains virile despite his age.) Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was burned at the stake here in March 1314. More recently, the ashes of Situationist philosopher Guy Debord, formulator of Psychogeography, were thrown into the Seine from this park.
Cross road to opposite side of bridge and enter rue Henri Robert. Exit into Place Dauphine.
6. The former garden of the Palais de la Cité, now the Palais de Justice or High Court, Place Dauphine is a popular meeting place for strollers, players of boule, etc., and a venue for street performers. The office building to the right of the court is part of police headquarters on Quai des Orfevres. Traditionally, one of the high windows was the office of Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret. Seen from the air, the Île de la Cité and Île Saint Louis resemble a female torso, with Place Dauphine as its pubic triangle, leading André Breton to designate it “le sexe de Paris.” In his 1927 novel Nadja, he made it the home of his mysterious heroine. He called it “one of the most profoundly secluded places I know . . . Whenever I happen to be there, I feel the desire to go somewhere else gradually ebbing out of me. I have to struggle against myself to get free from a gentle, over-insistent, and, finally, crushing embrace.”
Yves Montand and Simone Signoret
7. 15, Place Dauphine was for many years the home of actors Yves Montand and Simone Signoret.
8. 28, Place Dauphine houses stationers Papeteries Gaubert. The writer Colette refused to write on anything but their ice-blue paper. They still sell it, and, as in her time, by weight.
Exit Place Dauphine, turn left and return to Left Bank. Turn left and continue along quai des Grands-Augustins.
Quai des Grands-Augustins
9. Jean Rhys’ 1931 novel After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie begins “After she parted from Mr. Mackenzie, Julia Martin went to live in a cheap hotel on the Quai des Grands-Augustins. It looked a lowdown sort of place and the staircase smelt of the landlady’s cats, but the rooms were cleaner than you would have expected.” She doesn’t specify an address but her descriptions could apply to the quai’s numerous run-down hotels. The French edition uses the title Quai des Grands-Augustins.
First English translation, 1948
10. On the 4th floor at 53b quai des Grands-Augustins, on March 19, 1944, Surrealist writer Michel Leiris staged a reading, directed by Albert Camus, of Pablo Picasso’s only play Desire Caught by the Tail, performed by Jean-Paul Sartre, Dora Maar, Simone de Beauvoir and the author.
Turn right into rue des Grands-Augustins.
7, rue des Grands-Augustins
11. From 1936 until 1946, the loft at the top of 7, rue des Grands-Augustins was Pablo Picasso’s studio. So large that, in the words of photographer Brassai, “one had the impression of being inside a ship,” the attic of this 17th century building gave him the space to paint his 1937 Guernica, 25 feet long by 11 feet high.
The building housed a number of writers during the 19th century, including Honoré de Balzac, who set his story “The Unknown Masterpiece” there. During the 1930s, it was used by the Surrealists, by the October 1932 group of poet Jacques Prevert, and, between 1932 and 1936, by the theater group of Jean-Louis Barrault.
Return Quai des Grands-Augustins.
12. At 51, quai des Grands-Augustins is the famous—and famously expensive—restaurant Lapérouse, popular with George Sand, Guy de Maupassant, Émile Zola and Victor Hugo. Formerly a brothel, it retains its original architecture of small private rooms for discreet liaisons, well recreated in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1947 film Quai des Orfevres, where jealous husband Bernard Blier interrupts wife Suzy Delair as she dines with sordid publisher Charles Dullin.
13. Between 1951 and 1975, 15, quai des Grands-Augustins was the site of the tiny Cabaret L’Écluse, one of the performance venues that won the Latin Quarter its postwar reputation for bohemian entertainment. Jacques Brel, Marcel Marceau and Philippe Noiret performed here.
Statue of Archangel Michael
Place St. Michel, c. 1900
14. Place St. Michel. Regarded as the gate to the Left Bank, this wide intersection is dominated by Francisque-Joseph Duret’s fountain and the statue of the Archangel Michael trampling the devil. After World War II, the fountain was rededicated as a monument to French citizens who died resisting Nazi occupation. The square and boulevard St. Michel (“‘boul’Mich”) saw pitched battles during the 1968 student revolution when trees along the thoroughfare were felled to create barricades.
Cross boulevard St. Michel and enter rue de la Huchette. The Latin Quarter was originally so called because of the medieval religious schools that clustered here. In modern times, the nightclubs and cabarets that took over its shopfronts and cellars made the term “Latin Quarter” synonymous with bohemianism.
15. Since 1957, the tiny 85-seat Theatre de la Huchette (23, rue de la Huchette) has presented only plays by Eugene Ionesco. More than 1.5 million people have seen its double bill of The Lesson and The Bald Prima Donna.
16. American expatriate Elliott Paul, sometime editor of the magazine transition and intimate of Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, celebrated rue de la Huchette in his 1942 novel The Last Time I Saw Paris. In the book, the building at 14, rue de la Huchette, marked by a letter “Y” chiseled into the stone, housed the brothel Le Panier Fleuri—The Flower Basket.
Caveau de la Huchette, 1957
17. Caveau de la Huchette (5, rue de la Huchette) is a jazz venue in a medieval cellar. Among those who have performed here are Lionel Hampton, Harry “Sweets” Edison, “Memphis Slim” and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Today a house group plays boogie and swing, suitable for dancing.
Turn right, cross the square in front of the Eglise Saint Séverin and enter rue Saint Séverin.
Maurice Girodias (standing) & Peter Orlovsky at the nightclub, 1961
18. From 1959 to 1964, 7, rue Saint Séverin housed La Grande Severine, the arts and performance complex of Maurice Girodias, owner of the Olympia Press and publisher of Nabokov’s Lolita, Samuel Beckett’s Watt and Molloy, and numerous works of pornography. Chez Vodka specialized in Russian music, performers at the Brazilian-themed La Batacuda included Marpessa Dawn, star of the film Black Orpheus, and in the Blues-Bar and basement Jazzland, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor played. In 1964, Girodias challenged censorship by staging an adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s La Philosophie dans le boudoir. The production was seen by actress Catherine Deneuve, director Roger Vadim and novelist Romain Gary, but as Girodias had no license to present theater, he was forced to shut down.
Exit onto rue du Petit-Pont and cross to rue Galande.
19. The church of Saint Julien le Pauvre (Saint Julien the Poor) at 79, rue Galande is one of the oldest in Paris. On April 14, 1921, a group including André Breton, Tristan Tzara, Philippe Soupault and Francis Picabia stood in front of it and mocked passers-by in what was called a “Dada Excursion.” They also offered guided tours of the nearby morgue. The event, regarded as a failure by Breton, spurred him to break with Dada and launch Surrealism.
Continue to the riverbank and turn left into rue de la Bucherie.
20. Shakespeare and Company at 37, rue de la Bucherie, is Paris’s largest and most popular English-language bookshop. Opened in 1951 by George Whitman as Le Mistral, it became Shakespeare and Company after the death of Sylvia Beach in 1964. Portions of the lending library from the original store on rue de l’Odéon are housed in an upstairs reading room. During the 1960s, the shop hosted such writers as Lawrence Durrell and provided a haven for such Beat Generation figures as Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, some of whom slept on the floor of the office next door (now its Rare Book Room.) The shop figures in numerous books and films, including Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset (2004) and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011).
Return Saint Michel metro stop.
