Nightclub · Saint-Germain-des-Prés · 6e arrondissement

Le Montana

The buildingStill standing

Getting inIn, as a customer

What's there nowMontana by Ticca

The postwar bar is gone; since 2022 an Italian restaurant, Montana by Ticca, has traded under the name at the address, with hotel suites above.

A Saint-Germain bar of the postwar years, steps from the Café de Flore, that the City of Paris counts among the gay clubs James Baldwin frequented.

Address: 28 Rue Saint-Benoît, 75006 Paris
Years: late 1940s–1950s

Illustration The Montana today, dark grey façade with a red cursive neon sign and red curtains behind black window frames

The present Montana: dark walls, red neon, curtains drawn. Nothing of the postwar room is visible from the street.

Editorial illustration

The story

James Baldwin at the Montana

Baldwin's Montana is an evening address from his earliest, poorest Paris years, when he lived a few streets away at the hôtel de Verneuil. The record of it is honest but thin: the City of Paris says he went; Ellery Washington, retracing Baldwin's Paris for The New York Times in 2014, counted the Montana among his favorite spots and noted it was one of the few survivors — by then "one of the most exclusive clubs in Paris."

What he did on any given night is not itemized anywhere. That he went is documented; anything more particular survives only in the fiction, which drew its bars from exactly this street and its hours.

The jazz years

The Montana's own legend is musical. A history of the address describes the 1950s bar as a den of jazz enthusiasts and places Boris Vian and Juliette Gréco among the crowd — names plausible anywhere on this street in those years, and best read as lore with good geography. The room kept its bandstand habits long afterward: the pianist René Urtreger, who had toured with Dizzy Gillespie, later took a residency at the Montana and remembered winning over an indifferent crowd and breaking in young musicians there.

The street

At number 5, from 1943 until her death, Marguerite Duras kept the apartment where the "groupe de la rue Saint-Benoît" met — writers and thinkers whose evenings ran to politics as much as literature; a plaque marks the building now. The Flore and the Deux Magots stand at the boulevard end of the street. Almost everything in Baldwin's early Paris geography sits within two hundred meters of this corner.

Visiting today

ThenNow

ThenThe Montana, a cellar-circuit bar where Saint-Germain drank and heard jazz after the cafés closed
NowMontana by Ticca, an Italian restaurant trading under the name since 2022
ThenPart of the gay nightlife James Baldwin frequented, with L'Abbaye and La Reine Blanche
NowNo trace of that circuit at the address; the street plan is the only reliable witness
ThenA bandstand room; René Urtreger later held a piano residency
NowHotel suites above the restaurant; the interior rebuilt several times, most recently in 2022

Current name: Montana by Ticca, an Italian restaurant, with the Hôtel Montana's suites above — 28 rue Saint-Benoît, 6th arrondissement
Métro: Saint-Germain-des-Prés
What remains: the address and the name; the interior has been rebuilt several times, most recently in the 2015 hotel renovation and the 2022 restaurant fit-out
Worth the stop? Mainly for dedicated Baldwin readers — the original venue is gone, but the street remains part of his early Paris geography

Last verified: August 2026.

Key facts

Address: 28 rue Saint-Benoît, 6th arrondissement
What it was: A postwar Saint-Germain bar and club on the cellar circuit
Baldwin connection: Named by the City of Paris among the gay clubs he frequented in his early Paris years
Today: An Italian restaurant, Montana by Ticca, trades under the name; the original room is gone

In images

Pen-and-ink illustration of the Montana's façade on the rue Saint-Benoît, cursive neon sign over a doorway with curtained windows — The façade at 28 rue Saint-Benoît, drawn as it stands today.Editorial illustration

The Montana today, dark grey façade with a red cursive neon sign and red curtains behind black window frames — The present Montana: dark walls, red neon, curtains drawn. Nothing of the postwar room is visible from the street.Editorial illustration

Timeline

late 1940s
Part of the postwar Saint-Germain night circuit; James Baldwin is among the patrons in his early Paris years.
1950s
Remembered as a jazz haunt; one history of the address places Boris Vian and Juliette Gréco among the patrons.
2009
Relaunched as a nightclub, with a hotel above.
2015
Reopens after a full rebuild as a six-suite hotel with restaurant and rooftop bar.
2022
Reopens as Montana by Ticca, an Italian restaurant keeping the name.

On the map

Writers who knew this place

James Baldwin

American · American novelist and essayist who left Harlem for Paris at twenty-four with forty dollars, and wrote the books that made him the most quoted witness to race, sex and belonging in twentieth-century America.

Frequented by

The City of Paris names Le Montana among the gay clubs Baldwin frequented in his early Paris years, alongside L'Abbaye and La Reine Blanche. Of the group, the Montana is the only address where a successor venue still trades under the name.

— Sur les traces de l'écrivain James Baldwin à Paris

Guides featuring Le Montana

Take them with you.

Ink and wash drawing of James Baldwin standing in a wet Paris street with a suitcase in one hand and a coat gathered against the rain, a Métropolitain entrance behind him and a domed church down the boulevard

GuideJames Baldwin’s Paris: A Self-Guided Walking Tour of the Left BankJames Baldwin arrived in November 1948 with forty dollars, and for nearly a decade his Paris fit inside one Left Bank neighborhood: Saint-Germain-des-Prés, its hotels, cafés and clubs. You can walk it all in an afternoon.Read the guide

Within walking distance

Café · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Café de Flore

A few doors from Les Deux Magots and part of the same Left Bank circuit. Later became more associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Visit the place

Apartment · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

26 rue Saint-Benoît

The Saint-Germain address where the City of Paris places James Baldwin as a likely resident in the early 1950s, around the publication of Go Tell It on the Mountain.

Visit the place

Café · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Les Deux Magots

The famous literary terrace where the expat crowd gathered. Ernest Hemingway came here, though he preferred La Closerie for actual work.

Visit the place

The same terrace in colour, the awning cream and green, glasses of beer on the tables in afternoon sun

Bar · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

La Reine Blanche

The cheap bar across the boulevard from the Café de Flore where James Baldwin drank through his first Paris years, and where he met Lucien Happersberger in 1949.

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.