Apartment · Saint-Germain-des-Prés · 6e arrondissement

28 rue Jacob

The buildingStill standing

Getting inOutside only

What's there nowA private home

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

Colette's first marital home in Paris, a third-floor apartment she took with her husband Willy in 1893.

Address: 28 rue Jacob, 75006 Paris
Years: 1893–1896

Illustration The 28 rue Jacob frontage in colour, its shuttered windows and ground-floor shops on the Left Bank street

The building today, on the Left Bank in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

Colette came to Paris in 1893, at twenty, as the new wife of the writer and impresario Willy — Henry Gauthier-Villars — and their first home was a third-floor apartment at 28 rue Jacob, on the Left Bank. It was here that she entered Willy's literary and social world, the machine that would soon put out the Claudine novels under his name alone.

She remembered the rue Jacob years mostly as a time of waiting. The couple moved on in 1896 to the rue de Courcelles. The building still stands on the quiet street between the boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine.

Key facts

Address: 28 rue Jacob, 6th arrondissement
Who lived here: Colette and her husband Willy
When: 1893–1896, her first Paris home
Today: Private residence; the building stands

In images

Pen-and-ink illustration of the façade at 28 rue Jacob, the 'RUE JACOB' street sign and number 28 above a carved double door, antique-shop windows at street level — 28 rue Jacob, Colette's first Paris home, taken with Willy after their 1893 marriage.Editorial illustration

The 28 rue Jacob frontage in colour, its shuttered windows and ground-floor shops on the Left Bank street — The building today, on the Left Bank in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.Editorial illustration

Timeline

1893
Colette marries Willy and moves into a third-floor apartment on the rue Jacob.
1896
The couple leaves for the rue de Courcelles.

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 · 1893–1896

Colette's first Paris home, a third-floor apartment taken with her husband Willy after their 1893 marriage.

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

Within walking distance

Salon · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

20 rue Jacob

The courtyard pavilion where Natalie Clifford Barney held her Friday salon for sixty years, and the small Doric temple in its garden.

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Street · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Rue Bonaparte

The street that stitches the Left Bank together — river to Beaux-Arts to Saint-Germain to Saint-Sulpice — and the nightly walk Henry Miller could not stop remembering.

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The same view in colour, pale stone facades and a grey-green awning under an overcast sky, the spire showing above the roofs

Quarter · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Saint-Germain-des-Prés

The Left Bank quarter around the abbey church, where the cafés doubled as offices and the bars above and below them ran the other half of post-war Paris.

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Café · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Les Deux Magots

The famous literary terrace where the expat crowd gathered. Ernest Hemingway came here, though he preferred La Closerie for actual work.

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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.