Rue Jacob & Place de Furstemberg: Natalie Barney's Temple and Delacroix's Studio
Why is it significant?
Walk into the tiny square and stop under the trees: a single old lamp post crowned with white globes, a few paulownias that flower purple in spring, and the sound of the city falling away. Film-makers love it. It is one of the most romantic corners of Paris, and it was built as a stable yard.
Key Facts
| Place | Rue Jacob & Place de Furstemberg: Natalie Barney's Temple and Delacroix's Studio |
|---|---|
| Address | 6 Rue de Furstemberg, 75006 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.85460, 2.33590 |
| Part of Walk | Ink, Coffee and Revolution: A Literary Walk Through Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk into the tiny square and stop under the trees: a single old lamp post crowned with white globes, a few paulownias that flower purple in spring, and the sound of the city falling away. Film-makers love it. It is one of the most romantic corners of Paris, and it was built as a stable yard.
The square was laid out in 1699 by Cardinal Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, the German-born abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, as the forecourt of his palace's stables and service buildings. The abbey you saw earlier owned all this land, and its abbots lived like princes. After the Revolution the abbey's property was sold off piece by piece, and what had been a yard for horses and carriages slowly became one of the most secret little squares in Saint-Germain. The paulownia trees, with their huge heart-shaped leaves, came later and stole the show.
And at number 20, behind a courtyard, the American writer Natalie Clifford Barney held her literary salon on Friday afternoons for some sixty years. In her garden stands a small Doric temple she called the Temple of Friendship. Colette, Djuna Barnes and Ezra Pound came to her Fridays, and her salon was one of the few places where women writers who loved women could be entirely themselves.
Now look for number 6, at the corner of the square. In December 1857 Eugène Delacroix, ill and in his late fifties, moved here to be close to his murals at Saint-Sulpice. He had a studio built in the garden behind and worked here until his death in August 1863. Today it is the Musée national Eugène Delacroix, where you can see his palette, his letters and the quiet garden he looked at.
So the walk ends where it began, with coffee, ink and arguments: Voltaire at the Procope, Joyce on Rue de l'Odéon, Sartre at the Flore, Wilde at his wallpaper, and Delacroix here, painting angels to the last. Saint-Germain still keeps its writers... they just have better heating now. Stay a moment in the square, and let the lanterns come on.