A new film revisits Miles Davis and Juliette Gréco’s Paris romance—a brief affair in 1949 that became a lifelong attachment.
Who would imagine, walking along the Boulevard Saint Germain and through Place Maubert today, that this genteel corner of the Latin Quarter once had such a reputation? The place and its neighbouring streets were known for drinking dens and a criminal underworld.
For one night on 28 October, 1940s Saint-Germain-des-Prés came to rue Maître-Albert, my street in the 5th arrondissement.
In medieval times, Paris was a walled city, but did you know that it remained essentially so until the 1920s?
An enslaved child brought to Versailles, Zamor grew up in Madame du Barry’s household and later testified against her during the Revolution. Generations of writers condemned him as an ungrateful betrayer. Discovering that he had lived and died in my street made me question that verdict.
A shoe shiner and his customer became two of the first people ever photographed. Almost two centuries later, Paris has marked their spot—but their identities remain a mystery.
At the Musée Marmottan Monet, the stories behind the landscapes lead from a painter’s return from Verdun to Mondrian’s experiments with abstraction.
There’s a little theatre to dinner at Azabu, and the surprises aren’t all on the plate.
Half an hour west of the centre, La Muette felt like a very different Paris.
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was Marie Antoinette’s favourite painter—and the artist behind a portrait that scandalised Paris. Her fame followed her through twelve years of exile, as she painted her way around Europe. Part of her Paris home still survives in the Sentier.