Hotel · Montmartre · 18e arrondissement

16 rue Ravignan

The buildingDemolished

Getting inOutside only

What's there nowNothing survives

The Hôtel du Poirier has been demolished. The address is on the record; the building is not.

The site of the Hôtel du Poirier in Montmartre, where Albert Camus finished writing L'Étranger in early May 1940 — in a hotel room, at twenty-six, in the weeks before the German army reached Paris. The hotel is gone.

Address: 16 rue Ravignan, 75018 Paris
Years: Camus finished L'Étranger in a room here in May 1940

The place, briefly

Albert Camus came to Paris in 1940 and took a room at the Hôtel du Poirier, 16 rue Ravignan, on the Montmartre hillside. In early May of that year he finished L'Étranger there.

The timing is the thing. May 1940 is the month the German offensive broke through in the Ardennes. Camus completed a novel about a man who feels nothing at his mother's funeral, and is condemned less for a killing than for that absence of feeling, in the weeks before Paris fell. He was twenty-six and largely unknown.

The street is the same one as the Bateau-Lavoir, at number 13 — Picasso's studio, where Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was painted in 1907. Two of the defining works of twentieth-century European art were made about thirty metres apart, three decades apart, by men who were both broke at the time and neither of whom was French.

The hotel has been demolished. There is nothing at the address, which is worth saying plainly rather than sending anyone to look for a plaque.

Key facts

What it was: The Hôtel du Poirier
What happened here: Camus finished L'Étranger, early May 1940
How old he was: Twenty-six, and largely unknown
What was happening outside: The German offensive; Paris fell the following month
The street's other tenant: The Bateau-Lavoir at number 13, where Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Today: Demolished — nothing to see

Timeline

1940
Camus takes a room at the Hôtel du Poirier, 16 rue Ravignan.
Early May 1940
He finishes L'Étranger there.
June 1940
He moves to the Hôtel Madison on the boulevard Saint-Germain; Paris falls to the German army.
1942
L'Étranger is published by Gallimard.

On the map

Questions before you go

Where did Camus write L'Étranger?

He finished it in a room at the Hôtel du Poirier, 16 rue Ravignan in Montmartre, in early May 1940. He was twenty-six and largely unknown, and Paris fell to the German army the following month.

Is the hotel still there?

No — the Hôtel du Poirier has been demolished. The address is on the record but there is no building and no plaque, so this is a site to know about rather than visit.

What else is on the rue Ravignan?

The Bateau-Lavoir, at number 13 — Picasso's studio, where he painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907. Two defining works of twentieth-century European art were made about thirty metres apart, three decades apart, by men who were both broke and neither of whom was French.

Writers who knew this place

Albert Camus

French Algerian · French Algerian novelist, essayist, journalist and playwright who used the absurd and revolt to ask how people should live without false consolation.

Lived here · 1940

Camus finished L'Étranger in a room at the Hôtel du Poirier, 16 rue Ravignan, in early May 1940 — aged twenty-six, largely unknown, and weeks before Paris fell. The hotel has since been demolished.

— Une balade sur les traces d'Albert Camus à Paris

Within walking distance

Apartment · Montmartre

Le Bateau-Lavoir

A ramshackle Montmartre building of cheap artists' studios, where Pablo Picasso lived and worked from 1904 and painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907 — the picture that broke the rules of European painting. The original burned down in 1970; the rebuilt version still holds studios.

Visit the place

Apartment · Montmartre

49 rue Gabrielle

Where Pablo Picasso set up his first studio in Paris, in 1900, at the age of eighteen — four years before the Bateau-Lavoir and seven before Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Visit the place

Street · Montmartre

Rue des Trois Frères

A freely walkable nineteenth-century Montmartre street of slopes, cobbles and apartment façades, and the deliberately imprecise location of Langston Hughes's second Paris attic in 1924.

Visit the place

Theatre · Montmartre (below the rue Lepic)

Studio 28

A small Montmartre cinema, opened in 1928 and still running. It gave Un Chien andalou an eight-month run from October 1929, and in December 1930 its screening of Buñuel and Dalí's L'Âge d'or ended with far-right groups attacking the auditorium and slashing the paintings hanging in the foyer.

Visit the place

The Friday Letter

Paris, one address at a time.

The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.