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Square · Quartier de l'Europe (8th) · 8e arrondissement

Place de Dublin

The buildingStill standing
Getting inWalk straight in
What's there nowStill the same

A public street junction, freely walkable. Of all the painted locations in Paris, it is among the closest to how its painting shows it.

The star-shaped junction in the Quartier de l'Europe where Gustave Caillebotte set Paris Street; Rainy Day — and one of the few places in Paris where you can stand almost exactly where a famous painting was composed and recognise everything.

Address
place de Dublin, 75008 Paris
Years
Laid out in the Haussmann rebuilding of the Quartier de l'Europe
IllustrationBright present-day view of pedestrians crossing between the pale stone wedges of Place de Dublin

A current color reconstruction from rue de Moscou; all pedestrians and storefront details are newly generated.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

Gustave Caillebotte painted Paris Street; Rainy Day in 1877, and it is now among the best-known images of the nineteenth-century city: a wide wet junction, umbrellas, a couple advancing at the right, a lamp-post cutting the canvas in two.

The junction is this one. The quarter had only recently been cut through by Haussmann's engineers, and the picture is about that newness — the pale stone still clean, the pavements enormous, the space slightly too big for the people crossing it. Caillebotte lived a few streets away and knew exactly what he was looking at.

What makes it worth visiting is how little has changed. The radial alignment of the buildings, the acute-angled corner behind the couple, the sightlines down each street: they are all still there. Most Impressionist sites have been rebuilt beyond recognition. This one has not.

The painting itself is in Chicago, at the Art Institute.

Key facts

The painting
Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877
Where the painting is
The Art Institute of Chicago
The quarter
The Europe district, newly cut by Haussmann's rebuilding
Why go
The buildings and sightlines are substantially unchanged
Access
A public junction — walk in

In images

Place de Dublin today, with the Haussmann street geometry Caillebotte used still intact.Editorial illustration
A current color reconstruction from rue de Moscou; all pedestrians and storefront details are newly generated.Editorial illustration
Historically informed reconstruction of the newly built junction in the year of Paris Street; Rainy Day.Artistic reconstruction
The documented junction in natural rainy-day color, using a viewpoint and figures distinct from Caillebotte's painting.Artistic reconstruction
The pale limestone, mansard roof and iron balconies that preserve the square's nineteenth-century character.Editorial illustration
A pedestrian-height view through the star junction's surviving radial sightlines.Editorial illustration
An alternate historical street-life scene after rain; every person and activity is newly generated.Artistic reconstruction

Timeline

  1. 1877

    Caillebotte paints Paris Street; Rainy Day and shows it at the third Impressionist exhibition.

On the map

Questions before you go

Where was Paris Street; Rainy Day painted?

At the place de Dublin, a star-shaped junction in the Quartier de l'Europe in the 8th arrondissement, in 1877.

Does it still look like the painting?

Remarkably closely. The radial building alignment, the sharp corner and the street sightlines are all still recognisable.

Where can I see the painting?

At the Art Institute of Chicago.

People who knew this place

Illustrated portrait of Gustave Caillebotte

Gustave Caillebotte

French · Painter

The star-shaped junction in the Quartier de l'Europe where Caillebotte composed Paris Street; Rainy Day in 1877. The buildings and sightlines survive largely unchanged.

Within walking distance

Colour photorealistic view of 4 rue de Saint-Pétersbourg beneath a bright blue sky

Apartment · Quartier de l'Europe (8th)

4 rue de Saint-Pétersbourg

Manet's studio through the 1870s, whose windows looked down on what was then the rue Mosnier — the street he painted repeatedly, flags and all, in the summer of 1878.

Visit the place
Bright present-day view of pedestrians crossing the Pont de l'Europe above the railway cutting

Bridge · Quartier de l'Europe (8th)

Pont de l'Europe

The iron bridge carrying six streets across the tracks behind Gare Saint-Lazare — the subject of Gustave Caillebotte's 1876 painting, and the spot where Impressionism looked hardest at industrial Paris.

Visit the place
Colour photorealistic view of 39 rue de Saint-Pétersbourg beneath a bright blue sky

Apartment · Quartier de l'Europe (8th)

39 rue de Saint-Pétersbourg

The apartment Édouard Manet moved to in 1878 and remained associated with until his death in 1883, in the last years when illness had reduced what he could physically paint.

Visit the place
Colour photorealistic view of 42 rue de Londres beneath a bright blue sky

Apartment · Quartier de l'Europe (8th)

42 rue de Londres

One of Claude Debussy's documented Paris homes, and his address until around 1894 — the years in which he wrote the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and began Pelléas et Mélisande.

Visit the place
References

References

The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document Place de Dublin, the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.

  1. 1Cat. 2: Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877 — Caillebotte Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago (Gloria Groom and Kelly Keegan)

    Website
    Art Institute of Chicago
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Place de Dublin page.

    View source

  2. 2Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter's Eye — National Gallery of Art

    Website
    National Gallery of Art, Washington
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Place de Dublin page.

    View source

  1. 3Paris Street; Rainy Day (Gustave Caillebotte) — Art Institute of Chicago

    Website
    Art Institute of Chicago
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Place de Dublin page.

    View source

  2. 4Gustave Caillebotte — Encyclopaedia Britannica

    Website
    Encyclopaedia Britannica
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Place de Dublin page.

    View source
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Why these sources are here

These references provide the documented foundation for this page's history and context. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.

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