The house where Claude Debussy lived from 1905 until his death in 1918, and where he wrote most of his late music. Its address changed twice — the number was altered while he lived there, and the avenue was renamed afterwards.
In October 1905 Claude Debussy moved here with Emma Bardac, who was pregnant with their daughter Claude-Emma, always called Chouchou. He was forty-three, newly famous after Pelléas et Mélisande, and newly notorious: he had left his first wife for Emma, and the resulting scandal had cost him several friendships.
This was the last and by some distance the most comfortable of his homes, and the address of nearly all the late work — La Mer had just been finished, and the two books of Préludes, the Études, Jeux and the late chamber sonatas were all written from here. Chouchou, born in 1905, is the dedicatee of the Children's Corner suite.
It is also where he died, of cancer, on 25 March 1918, while Paris was under German bombardment. The circumstances made a public funeral impossible. Chouchou died of diphtheria the following year, aged thirteen.
The address needs care and is easy to get wrong. Debussy moved into number 64 of what was then the avenue du Bois de Boulogne. In January 1908, while he was still living there, the house was renumbered 80. The avenue was subsequently renamed the avenue Foch. All three forms appear in the literature and they all mean this house.
Debussy and Emma Bardac move to 64 avenue du Bois de Boulogne in October; their daughter Chouchou is born.
The house is renumbered from 64 to 80 in January.
Debussy dies here on 25 March, during the German bombardment of Paris.
At his house on what is now the avenue Foch in the 16th arrondissement, on 25 March 1918, while Paris was being shelled.
Because both the number and the street name changed. Debussy moved into 64 avenue du Bois de Boulogne in 1905; the house was renumbered 80 in January 1908 while he lived there; and the avenue was later renamed avenue Foch.
Claude-Emma Debussy, the composer's daughter, born in 1905. The Children's Corner suite is dedicated to her. She died of diphtheria in 1919, aged thirteen.
Debussy and Emma Bardac moved here in October 1905, to what was then 64 avenue du Bois de Boulogne. The house was renumbered 80 in January 1908 during their occupancy, and the avenue was later renamed avenue Foch. He died here on 25 March 1918.
The apartment Berthe Morisot moved to after her husband's death in 1892, and where she worked hard through her final years — more than a hundred works came out of this address before she died in 1895.
Visit the placeThe house Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet had built for themselves in the early 1880s on what was then the rue de Villejust — her home, her studio, and the setting of a salon that drew Renoir, Degas and Mallarmé.
Visit the place
The home of Mathilde de Morny — Missy — where Colette lived through much of their relationship after leaving Willy.
Visit the place
The ground-floor apartment Colette rented on her own after leaving Willy, remembered as a place of new independence. The building no longer exists.
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.
