Édouard Manet
Manet was born at what is now 5 rue Bonaparte on 23 January 1832. The street was then called the rue des Petits-Augustins.
5 rue Bonaparte
Still standing
Outside only
Someone else
The house where Édouard Manet was born on 23 January 1832, on a street then called the rue des Petits-Augustins — a few doors from the art school and a bridge from the Louvre.
- 5 rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris
- Manet was born here on 23 January 1832
The place, briefly
Édouard Manet was born here on 23 January 1832. His father was a senior official in the Ministry of Justice and the family expected a respectable career; the long fight over Manet's decision to paint instead is one of the standard stories of his early life.
The street was then called the rue des Petits-Augustins and was later renamed rue Bonaparte, which is why older accounts and modern maps give the address differently.
The location is almost comically apt. The École des Beaux-Arts is a few doors up the same street, and the Louvre — where Manet would register as a copyist, and where he and Edgar Degas probably met in 1859 — is across the river. Manet was born into the geography of the profession he was not supposed to enter.
Key facts
- 23 January 1832
- rue des Petits-Augustins
- His father was a senior Ministry of Justice official
- The École des Beaux-Arts, on the same street
- Private building — exterior only
Timeline
Édouard Manet is born at what is now 5 rue Bonaparte on 23 January.
Manet and Degas probably meet at the Louvre, across the river.
On the map
Questions before you go
Where was Édouard Manet born?
At what is now 5 rue Bonaparte in the 6th arrondissement, on 23 January 1832. The street was then called the rue des Petits-Augustins.
Can you visit?
No — it is a private building, visible only from the street.
People who knew this place
Within walking distance
École des Beaux-Arts
France's national art school, on the rue Bonaparte across from the Louvre. Almost every French painter of the nineteenth century passed through it, argued with it, or defined themselves against it — Degas entered in the 1850s.
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 placeBibliothèque Mazarine
France's oldest public library, in the Institut de France on the quai de Conti. Marcel Proust was appointed an unpaid attaché here in 1895 — a post he held while, by the city's own dry account, showing up only rarely.
Visit the place
28 rue Jacob
Colette's first marital home in Paris, a third-floor apartment she took with her husband Willy in 1893.
Visit the placeThe 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.