Colette's home above the Palais-Royal garden, and the address that made her its dame. She lived here from 1938 until her death in 1954.
The last address in Colette's long Paris map was a set of rooms at 9 rue de Beaujolais, on the north side of the Palais-Royal. She took a small entresol apartment here in November 1926, left it in 1930 for the Champs-Élysées, and returned in January 1938 to the first floor — the étage noble she had wanted all along — where she stayed until she died. The City of Paris calls her, for these years, la dame du Palais-Royal.
The windows gave onto the garden, and the garden became her world as arthritis narrowed it. She wrote from a daybed she called her raft, the desk light angled over it, and made the view itself a subject: Le Fanal bleu, published in 1949, watches the Palais-Royal through these panes. Jean Cocteau lived a few doors along the same arcades and was a frequent neighbor.
Colette died in the apartment on 3 August 1954. France gave her a state funeral in the courtyard of the Palais-Royal, the first it had granted a woman of letters, and she was buried at Père-Lachaise. The building is still lived in and closed to visitors, but the commemorative plaque and the sun-and-C monogram on the balcony can be seen from the garden below.
Colette takes the entresol apartment at 9 rue de Beaujolais in November.
Leaves for a series of apartments on the Champs-Élysées.
Returns to No. 9, this time to the first-floor 'étage noble' over the garden.
Publishes Le Fanal bleu, written looking out on the Palais-Royal.
Dies here on 3 August; a state funeral is held in the Palais-Royal courtyard.
Her best-known address is 9 rue de Beaujolais, in the 1st arrondissement, overlooking the garden of the Palais-Royal. She lived on the first floor from 1938 until her death in 1954, after an earlier stay in the building's entresol from 1926 to 1930.
No. The building still stands and remains a private residence, so the apartment cannot be visited. From the garden you can see the commemorative plaque and the balcony worked with a C intertwined with a sun.
Because of these rooms. From 1938 her windows looked directly onto the Palais-Royal garden, which she watched and wrote about for the rest of her life, and the City of Paris uses the phrase for her Palais-Royal years.
In the apartment at 9 rue de Beaujolais, on 3 August 1954. France held a state funeral for her in the courtyard of the Palais-Royal — the first granted to a woman of letters — and she was buried at Père-Lachaise.
Her late work, most explicitly Le Fanal bleu (1949), which takes the view from these windows as its subject. She worked from a daybed as arthritis limited her movement.
Lived here · 1926–1954
Two residencies at 9 rue de Beaujolais: the entresol from November 1926 to 1930, then the first-floor 'étage noble' overlooking the Palais-Royal garden from January 1938 until her death on 3 August 1954, with an interval on the Champs-Élysées between.
The Palais-Royal restaurant Colette favored in her last years, a few doors from her apartment. A brass plaque still marks her seat.
Visit the place
A glass-roofed 1820s shopping arcade near the Palais-Royal, and home to the bookshop the City of Paris calls Colette's haunt.
Visit the place
The colonnaded garden Colette watched from her Palais-Royal windows for the last years of her life, and the setting of her 1954 state funeral.
Visit the place
The municipal school Louis-Ferdinand Céline attended from 1900 to 1905, two minutes' walk from the family shop in the Passage Choiseul — the first classroom of the boy then registered as Louis-Ferdinand Destouches.
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.
