Where the Proust family moved in 1900, and where Marcel lived until 1906 — the most socially active stretch of his life, receiving writers, artists and journalists and giving dinners. A commemorative plaque was installed by the City of Paris in 2022.
In 1900 the Prousts left 9 boulevard Malesherbes after twenty-seven years and moved a few streets north to 45 rue de Courcelles, near the Parc Monceau. Marcel Proust was twenty-nine, and he stayed six years.
These were his most sociable years, and it is worth being precise about why that matters. The Proust of legend is the recluse in the cork-lined room — but that man is the 102 boulevard Haussmann Proust, from 1906 onwards. The Proust of the rue de Courcelles was out constantly and receiving constantly: writers, artists and journalists came to the flat, and he gave dinners.
The novel depends on both men. In Search of Lost Time is an anatomy of a society — its manners, its snobberies, its exact gradations of who may be invited where — and that knowledge was gathered in years like these, at close range, by someone in the room. The sealed bedroom came afterwards, to write down what the sociable years had collected.
His father died in 1903 while the family was here, and his mother in 1905. By the end of 1906 he had moved alone to the boulevard Haussmann.
The building is private, but this is the easiest Proust address to be certain about: the City of Paris put a commemorative plaque on it in 2022 stating that he lived here from 1900 to 1906.
The Proust family moves from 9 boulevard Malesherbes to 45 rue de Courcelles.
Proust's most sociable years: receiving writers, artists and journalists, and giving dinners.
His father Adrien dies.
His mother Jeanne dies.
Proust leaves for 102 boulevard Haussmann.
The City of Paris installs a commemorative plaque on the building.
From 1900 to 1906, moving there with his family from 9 boulevard Malesherbes. A commemorative plaque installed by the City of Paris in 2022 records exactly those dates, which makes it the easiest of his addresses to verify on the spot.
Because they are the opposite of the Proust people picture. The recluse in the cork-lined room belongs to the boulevard Haussmann, from 1906 on. Here he was out constantly and receiving constantly — writers, artists and journalists at the flat, and dinners. The social knowledge that In Search of Lost Time anatomises was gathered in years like these.
Yes — the City of Paris installed one in 2022, stating that Proust lived in the building from 1900 to 1906. The flat itself is private, but the plaque is visible from the street.
Lived here · 1900–1906
The family's address after twenty-seven years on the boulevard Malesherbes, and Proust's most socially active period — receiving writers, artists and journalists, and giving dinners. Both his parents died while he lived here. A City of Paris plaque installed in 2022 records the 1900-1906 dates.
An unusually theatrical park in the 8th arrondissement, full of deliberate follies — a colonnade round a pond, a pyramid, fake ruins — laid out in the 1770s as a private garden and opened to the public in 1861. It is where the young Marcel Proust played, and where he met his first love in July 1886.
Visit the place
The bar-cabaret Louis Moysès opened in 1922, named for the Cocteau–Milhaud ballet — headquarters of the postwar avant-garde around Jean Cocteau, and one of Blaise Cendrars's regular Paris stops.
Visit the place
The sixth-floor former studio near Parc Monceau where Colette and Willy lived while the Claudine novels appeared under his name.
Visit the placeWhere Pablo Picasso lived and worked from 1918 with Olga Khokhlova — the apartment in the gallery district that marks his arrival into wealth, with a cook, a chauffeur, a chambermaid and a nurse, and his dealer Paul Rosenberg two doors along.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
