Apartment · Chaillot · 16e arrondissement

2 rue Georges-Ville

The buildingStill standing

Getting inOutside only

What's there nowA private home

The building stands and is private; the apartment cannot be visited.

The home of Mathilde de Morny — Missy — where Colette lived through much of their relationship after leaving Willy.

Address: 2 rue Georges-Ville, 75116 Paris
Years: 1906–1911

Illustration The 2 rue Georges-Ville frontage in colour, its stone balconies on a quiet street near the Avenue Foch

The building today, in the 16th arrondissement.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

After she separated from Willy late in 1906, Colette spent much of her time at 2 rue Georges-Ville, the home of Mathilde de Morny — the Marquise de Belbeuf, known as Missy — with whom she was then in a relationship. She kept apartments of her own nearby, but this was the household at the center of those years.

It was the period of their open life together and of the Moulin Rouge scandal of January 1907, when the two performed the mime Rêve d'Égypte and the police banned it. The relationship lasted until about 1911, when Colette took up with Henry de Jouvenel. The building stands in the 16th arrondissement.

Key facts

Address: 2 rue Georges-Ville, 16th arrondissement
Whose home: Mathilde de Morny (Missy); Colette lived here much of 1906–1911
Why it matters: The center of Colette and Missy's years together, around the Moulin Rouge scandal
Today: Private residence; the building stands

In images

Pen-and-ink illustration of the Haussmann apartment façade at 2 rue Georges-Ville, carved balconies and a wrought-iron street door — 2 rue Georges-Ville, Mathilde de Morny's home, where Colette lived through much of their relationship.Editorial illustration

The 2 rue Georges-Ville frontage in colour, its stone balconies on a quiet street near the Avenue Foch — The building today, in the 16th arrondissement.Editorial illustration

Timeline

1906
After leaving Willy, Colette lives largely with Missy at 2 rue Georges-Ville.
1907
The Rêve d'Égypte scandal at the Moulin Rouge falls in these years.
1911
The relationship ends as Colette takes up with Henry de Jouvenel.

On the map

Writers who knew this place

Colette

French · The French novelist who wrote the Claudine books under Willy’s name, earned her independence on the music-hall stage, and made women’s private lives a serious literary subject.

Lived here · 1906–1911

The home of Mathilde de Morny (Missy), where Colette lived much of the time during their relationship after leaving Willy, while keeping apartments of her own nearby.

— Sur les pas des écrivains : Colette; Société des amis de Colette — Chronology

Within walking distance

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

Apartment · Étoile / Champs-Élysées

14 Rue de Tilsitt

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.

Visit the place

Restaurant · Place de l'Alma

Chez Francis

The brasserie on the Place de l'Alma that Cendrars scholarship names as one of the writer's regular stops — a Right Bank address in a café life mapped mostly through Montparnasse.

Visit the place

The theater's pale stone-and-concrete front in daylight, gilded reliefs above the marquee and trees along the avenue

Theatre · Champs-Élysées

Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

The concrete temple of the avant-garde — where The Rite of Spring caused a riot in 1913, and the Ballet Mécanique caused another in 1926, with Ezra Pound shouting over the pianolas.

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.