The flat where Marcel Proust wrote most of In Search of Lost Time, in a bedroom he had lined with cork to keep the noise of the boulevard out. He moved in on 27 December 1906, after his parents' deaths, and stayed thirteen years. The room itself is now reassembled at the Musée Carnavalet.
Marcel Proust moved into 102 boulevard Haussmann on 27 December 1906. Both his parents were dead — his father in 1903, his mother in 1905 — and the move was into a building his family already had connections to, in the eighth arrondissement he had grown up in.
He stayed thirteen years, and in that time he became the writer everyone means by his name. The great work of In Search of Lost Time was conceived and largely written here.
The cork is the detail everyone knows and it deserves explaining, because it was not an affectation. Proust's asthma was severe and his sleep was inverted — he worked at night and slept through the day — and the boulevard Haussmann is a wide, loud Haussmannian street with traffic on it at all hours. So he had the bedroom walls lined with cork to deaden the sound, kept the curtains shut, and wrote in bed.
The result was one of the most extreme working arrangements in literature: a man in his thirties and forties, indoors, largely nocturnal, reconstructing an entire society from memory in a sealed room a few metres from one of the busiest streets in Paris. The novel's obsession with time and recall was written by someone who had removed himself from both daylight and noise in order to do it.
In early 1919 the building was sold, and he had to leave. He moved to 44 rue de l'Amiral-Hamelin, which he called an ignoble hovel, and died there in 1922.
The flat is private and there is nothing to see from the street but the façade. The room, however, survives: the Musée Carnavalet holds and displays Proust's bedroom — the furniture and the cork — reassembled, which is as close as anyone can now get to standing in it.
Proust's father dies.
His mother dies.
Proust moves into 102 boulevard Haussmann.
He writes most of In Search of Lost Time in the cork-lined bedroom.
The building is sold and he moves to 44 rue de l'Amiral-Hamelin.
Mostly at 102 boulevard Haussmann in the 8th arrondissement, where he lived from December 1906 for thirteen years. He worked in bed, at night, in a bedroom whose walls he had lined with cork.
To keep the noise out. His asthma was severe and he had inverted his hours, sleeping by day and writing at night, while the boulevard Haussmann carried traffic at all hours. Cork on the walls deadened the sound. It was a practical measure, not an eccentricity.
Not at the flat — 102 boulevard Haussmann is a private building and only the façade is visible. But the room itself was preserved: the Musée Carnavalet holds and displays Proust's bedroom, furniture and cork reassembled, which is the closest anyone can get to it now.
He had no choice — the building was sold in early 1919. He moved to 44 rue de l'Amiral-Hamelin in the 16th, a flat he described as an ignoble hovel, and died there on 18 November 1922.
Lived here · 1906–1919
Proust moved in on 27 December 1906, after both his parents had died, and stayed thirteen years. He had the bedroom walls lined with cork against the noise of the boulevard, inverted his hours to write at night, and produced most of In Search of Lost Time in that room. The room's contents are now reassembled at the Musée Carnavalet.
Paris's oldest terminus — Claude Monet's steam-filled train shed, the boat trains to the Atlantic liners, and the platform where the Paris chapters of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night end in pistol shots.
Visit the place
Where the stage version of Chéri premiered in 1921, and where Colette herself played Léa at its hundredth performance.
Visit the place
Where Colette made her public stage debut in 1906, the first step of the music-hall career that won her independence from Willy.
Visit the placeOne of the oldest and most prestigious lycées in Paris, by the Gare Saint-Lazare. Marcel Proust was a pupil here, and it is where his first writing was done — in small magazines produced with schoolfriends.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
