Apartment · Chaillot · 16e arrondissement

44 rue de Villejust

The buildingDemolished

Getting inOutside only

What's there nowNothing survives

A historical site, not a surviving residence: Colette's building was demolished around 1908, and the street was later renamed rue Paul-Valéry.

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

Address: rue Paul-Valéry (formerly rue de Villejust), 75116 Paris
Years: 1906–1908

No photograph survives The same Haussmann-era façade in colour, in warm stone with black iron balconies

A colour impression of the vanished building.

Artistic reconstruction — no photograph survives

The place, briefly

When Colette separated from Willy in 1906 she rented a ground-floor apartment of her own at 44 rue de Villejust, and remembered it as a place of hard-won independence in the first years of her stage career. She kept it while also living much of the time with Missy nearby.

The lease was short-lived: the building was scheduled for demolition around 1908, which forced her out. The street was later renamed rue Paul-Valéry, and nothing of Colette's address survives. It belongs on her map as a historical site rather than a place to visit.

Key facts

Former address: 44 rue de Villejust — the street is now rue Paul-Valéry, 16th arrondissement
Who lived here: Colette, on her own, after leaving Willy
When: 1906–1908
Today: Demolished; nothing of the building survives

In images

Pen-and-ink reconstruction of a Haussmann-era apartment building, its ground-floor entrance marked 44 — An impression of the building at 44 rue de Villejust, where Colette rented a ground-floor apartment after leaving Willy. It was demolished around 1908; this is a reconstruction, not a photograph.Artistic reconstruction — no photograph survives

The same Haussmann-era façade in colour, in warm stone with black iron balconies — A colour impression of the vanished building.Artistic reconstruction — no photograph survives

Illustration of the corner of rue Paul-Valéry today, where a later stone building flying a national flag stands on the site — The site today, on the renamed rue Paul-Valéry: a later building stands where No. 44 was. Nothing of Colette's address survives.Editorial illustration

Timeline

1906
Colette rents a ground-floor apartment at 44 rue de Villejust after separating from Willy.
1908
The building is slated for demolition and she has to leave; the street is later renamed rue Paul-Valéry.

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 · 1906–1908

A ground-floor apartment Colette rented on her own after leaving Willy; the building was demolished around 1908 and the street later renamed rue Paul-Valéry.

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

Within walking distance

Apartment · Chaillot

2 rue Georges-Ville

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

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.