One of the oldest and most prestigious lycées in Paris, by the Gare Saint-Lazare. Marcel Proust was a pupil here, and it is where his first writing was done — in small magazines produced with schoolfriends.
The Lycée Condorcet stands on the rue du Havre in the ninth, beside the Gare Saint-Lazare. Founded in the eighteenth century, it is among the oldest secondary schools in Paris and has educated a striking proportion of French literary and public life.
Marcel Proust was a pupil here, walking over from the family flat at 9 boulevard Malesherbes a few streets away. His asthma had begun at nine and his attendance was interrupted by it throughout.
What matters for the Atlas is that the writing starts here. Proust's first efforts were made with schoolfriends, in the small hand-produced magazines that lycéens of that period got up among themselves — the Musée Carnavalet describes his earliest writings as belonging to that Condorcet circle. It is an unremarkable adolescent activity that in this case produced the habit of a lifetime.
The school also fixes his social geography. Condorcet drew from the wealthy quarters around it, and the boys he sat with were the sons of the families whose salons he would enter in his twenties and whose manners he would spend thirty years anatomising. He did not have to research that world; he was schooled into it on this street.
It is a working lycée and there is nothing to visit. It sits about ten minutes' walk from 102 boulevard Haussmann, which makes the whole of Proust's early life fit into a very small piece of the ninth and eighth.
Proust attends the Lycée Condorcet, his schooling interrupted by asthma.
He produces his first writings in small magazines made with Condorcet schoolfriends.
He enters the salons of the eighth arrondissement — largely the families his classmates came from.
At the Lycée Condorcet, 8 rue du Havre in the 9th arrondissement, a few streets from the family flat on the boulevard Malesherbes. His asthma, which began when he was nine, interrupted his attendance throughout.
Yes. His earliest writings were done with Condorcet schoolfriends, in the small hand-produced magazines lycéens of the period made among themselves. An ordinary adolescent activity that in his case became the habit of a lifetime.
No — it is a working state secondary school rather than a visitor site, so it is an exterior stop. It stands about ten minutes' walk from 102 boulevard Haussmann, which is a useful way to see how small the area containing Proust's whole early life actually is.
Studied here
Proust attended the Lycée Condorcet, a few streets from the family flat on the boulevard Malesherbes, with his schooling interrupted by the asthma that had begun at nine. His first writings were produced there, in small magazines made with schoolfriends — and his classmates came from the families whose world he would spend thirty years anatomising.
Where Colette made her public stage debut in 1906, the first step of the music-hall career that won her independence from Willy.
Visit the place
Where the stage version of Chéri premiered in 1921, and where Colette herself played Léa at its hundredth performance.
Visit the place
Paris's oldest terminus — Claude Monet's steam-filled train shed, the boat trains to the Atlantic liners, and the platform where the Paris chapters of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night end in pistol shots.
Visit the placeThe flat where Marcel Proust wrote most of In Search of Lost Time, in a bedroom he had lined with cork to keep the noise of the boulevard out. He moved in on 27 December 1906, after his parents' deaths, and stayed thirteen years. The room itself is now reassembled at the Musée Carnavalet.
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.
