Colette
Lived here · 1893–1896
Colette's first Paris home, a third-floor apartment taken with her husband Willy after their 1893 marriage.
28 rue Jacob
Still standing
Outside only
A private home
Colette's first marital home in Paris, a third-floor apartment she took with her husband Willy in 1893.
- 28 rue Jacob, 75006 Paris
- 1893–1896
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
- 28 rue Jacob, 6th arrondissement
- Colette and her husband Willy
- 1893–1896, her first Paris home
- Private residence; the building stands
In images
Timeline
Colette marries Willy and moves into a third-floor apartment on the rue Jacob.
The couple leaves for the rue de Courcelles.
On the map
Writers who knew this place
Within walking distance
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.
Visit the place
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.
Visit the place
35 rue Jacob
The Catholic girls' school Simone de Beauvoir attended from the age of six until her baccalauréat. The address is now occupied by the Librairie des Femmes — the feminist bookshop and publishing house — which makes it the most improbable coincidence on any Paris literary walk.
Visit the place
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.
Visit the placeReferences
References
The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document 28 rue Jacob, the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.
1Société des amis de Colette — Lieux de vie
WebsiteUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the 28 rue Jacob page.
2Sur les pas des écrivains : Colette
WebsiteTerres d'écrivainsUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the 28 rue Jacob page.
3OpenStreetMap
Map dataUsed forMap data used to verify addresses, geographic coordinates, and the placement associated with 28 rue Jacob.
4Société des amis de Colette — Chronology
WebsiteUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the 28 rue Jacob page.
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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.
Explore more resourcesNewsletter
Paris, one address at a time.
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