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Apartment · Étoile / Champs-Élysées · 8e arrondissement

14 Rue de Tilsitt

The buildingStill standing
Getting inOutside only
What's there nowPrivate flats

The building stands on the ring of streets circling the Arc de Triomphe, a block from the Étoile.

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's Right Bank apartment in the year of Gatsby — a furnished fifth-floor flat by the Arc de Triomphe, and the address where Ernest Hemingway first came to lunch.

Address
14 Rue de Tilsitt, 75008 Paris
Years
1925–1926
IllustrationThe corner entrance of 14 rue de Tilsitt today — cream stone, black double doors between two topiaries, ironwork balconies above

Number 14 today — Haussmann stone and ironwork, a block from the Arc de Triomphe.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

The Fitzgeralds arrived in Paris in late April 1925 with The Great Gatsby just off the presses — it had published in New York on April 10, while they were en route from the Riviera — and took a furnished fifth-floor flat at 14 rue de Tilsitt, on the quiet ring of streets that circles the Arc de Triomphe. It was a Right Bank address in every sense: a block from the Étoile, a world away from the walk-ups and working cafés where the other American writers lived. Scott was twenty-eight, briefly the most celebrated young novelist in America, and the flat matched the celebrity rather than the writing.

Nobody was ever very kind about the apartment itself, including its tenants' friends. Hemingway, who came to lunch with Hadley that first summer, remembered it as gloomy and airless, furnished with someone else's imitation antiques — the only things in it that seemed to belong to the Fitzgeralds at all were Scott's own first editions bound in pale blue leather, and the ledger in which he kept meticulous account of every story sold and every dollar earned. The ledger was the tell: the flat was rented on short-story money, and the short stories were what the parties kept interrupting.

The rue de Tilsitt year was the hinge of the Fitzgeralds' Paris. Weeks after moving in, Scott introduced himself to Hemingway at the Dingo Bar in Montparnasse, beginning the friendship that A Moveable Feast would spend three chapters settling scores with. August took the family to Antibes for a month; the winter brought them back; and in January 1926 they left for a cure at Salies-de-Béarn and then the Riviera, done with the flat for good. The Paris of these months — the Ritz, the Right Bank hotels, the parties that ended badly — is recognizably the Paris that Tender Is the Night gives to Dick and Nicole Diver.

Key facts

Lived here
Late April 1925 – January 1926, Scott, Zelda, and Scottie Fitzgerald
What it was
Furnished fifth-floor flat on the ring of streets around the Arc de Triomphe
Neighborhood
The Étoile — the Right Bank, a block from the Arc de Triomphe
The moment
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby published April 10, 1925, days before they moved in
Today
The building stands, unmarked, in one of the city's most expensive quarters

In images

The corner doorway at number 14, on the ring of streets around the Étoile.Editorial illustration
Number 14 today — Haussmann stone and ironwork, a block from the Arc de Triomphe.Editorial illustration

Timeline

  1. 1925

    The Great Gatsby publishes in New York on April 10; the Fitzgeralds arrive in Paris in late April and take the flat.

  2. 1925

    Weeks later, Scott introduces himself to Hemingway at the Dingo Bar; Ernest and Hadley come to the flat for lunch.

  3. 1925

    August at Antibes with the Murphys; back to the rue de Tilsitt for the autumn and winter.

  4. 1926

    The family leaves in January for Salies-de-Béarn, then the Riviera — the flat is given up.

  5. Today

    The building stands quietly in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe.

On the map

Writers who knew this place

Illustrated portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

American · The Jazz Age's laureate — famous at twenty-three, author of Gatsby at twenty-eight, and owner of the longest posthumous comeback in American letters.

Lived here · 1925–1926

The furnished flat by the Arc de Triomphe the Fitzgeralds took in late April 1925, with The Great Gatsby days off the presses — the address where Hemingway and Hadley came to lunch, and their base until the family left for Salies-de-Béarn in January 1926.

— A Fitzgerald Chronology — Bruccoli Collection; Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964), the Scott Fitzgerald chapters

Lived here · 1925

The Fitzgeralds moved to Paris in late April 1925, days after The Great Gatsby was published, and rented an apartment at 14 rue de Tilsitt. The following month Fitzgerald met Hemingway at the Dingo Bar.

— A Fitzgerald Chronology — Bruccoli Collection

Illustrated portrait of Zelda Fitzgerald

Zelda Fitzgerald

American · Novelist, painter, and the Jazz Age's other Fitzgerald — the subject of A Moveable Feast's most disputed portrait.

Lived here · 1925–1926

Zelda's first settled Paris address — the Right Bank flat of the Gatsby year, kept through the winter until the family left for Salies-de-Béarn in January 1926.

— A Fitzgerald Chronology — Bruccoli Collection

Within walking distance

Colour photorealistic view of 40 rue Paul-Valéry beneath a bright blue sky

House · Chaillot (16th)

40 rue Paul-Valéry

The house Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet had built for themselves in the early 1880s on what was then the rue de Villejust — her home, her studio, and the setting of a salon that drew Renoir, Degas and Mallarmé.

Visit the place
The 93 rue de Courcelles frontage in colour, its stone façade and street-level shops near Parc Monceau

Apartment · Plaine Monceau

93 rue de Courcelles

The sixth-floor former studio near Parc Monceau where Colette and Willy lived while the Claudine novels appeared under his name.

Visit the place
The same Haussmann-era façade in colour, in warm stone with black iron balconies

Apartment · Chaillot

44 rue de Villejust

The ground-floor apartment Colette rented on her own after leaving Willy, remembered as a place of new independence. The building no longer exists.

Visit the place
Colour photorealistic view of the approximate rue Guyot studio site beneath a bright blue sky

Apartment · Plaine Monceau (17th)

81 rue Guyot (now rue Médéric)

The studio Édouard Manet worked in through the 1860s, where Émile Zola sat for his portrait. The street has since been renamed rue Médéric and renumbered, so the modern address is a conversion rather than a certainty.

Visit the place
References

References

The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document 14 Rue de Tilsitt, the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.

  1. 1A Fitzgerald Chronology — Bruccoli Collection

    Archive
    University of South Carolina Libraries
    Used for

    Archival evidence used to document the historical record connected to 14 Rue de Tilsitt.

    View source

  2. 2A Moveable Feast

    Memoir
    Ernest Hemingway, 1964
    Used for

    First-person evidence and historical context used in preparing the 14 Rue de Tilsitt page.

  1. 3OpenStreetMap

    Map data
    Used for

    Map data used to verify addresses, geographic coordinates, and the placement associated with 14 Rue de Tilsitt.

    View source

  2. 4Princeton's Fitzgerald Collections

    Archive
    Princeton University Library
    Used for

    Archival evidence used to document the historical record connected to 14 Rue de Tilsitt.

    View source
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Why these sources are here

These references provide the documented foundation for this page's history and context. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.

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