Quai Voltaire: Where Voltaire Died and Baudelaire Wrote
Why is it significant?
Lean on the stone parapet beside the dark green boxes of the bouquinistes, the riverside booksellers, and look across the Seine at the long facade of the Louvre. Then turn around and find the corner house at number 27, at the end of Rue de Beaune, with a plaque on its wall.
Key Facts
| Place | Quai Voltaire: Where Voltaire Died and Baudelaire Wrote |
|---|---|
| Address | 27 Quai Voltaire, 75007 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.85910, 2.33040 |
| Part of Walk | Ink, Coffee and Revolution: A Literary Walk Through Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
Lean on the stone parapet beside the dark green boxes of the bouquinistes, the riverside booksellers, and look across the Seine at the long facade of the Louvre. Then turn around and find the corner house at number 27, at the end of Rue de Beaune, with a plaque on its wall.
On your way here you crossed Rue Jacob, and a few doors along it, at number 56, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay signed the Treaty of Paris with Britain on the third of September 1783, ending the American War of Independence. But this quay belongs to another old man. In February 1778, Voltaire came back to Paris after almost thirty years of exile, aged eighty-three, and stayed in this house as the guest of the Marquis de Villette.
Paris went wild. Crowds blocked the quay to catch sight of him, and at the Comédie-Française his bust was crowned with laurels on stage while he watched from his box. It was too much for him. He died in this house on the thirtieth of May 1778. The Church refused him a Christian burial in Paris, so, the story goes, his nephew propped the body upright in a carriage, dressed as if alive, and drove it out of the city to an abbey in Champagne, where it was buried before any ban could arrive. In 1791 the Revolution carried him to the Panthéon, and gave this quay his name.
A few doors back toward the east, at number 19, the Hôtel du Quai Voltaire has had an extraordinary guest list. Charles Baudelaire lived there in the late 1850s, around the time The Flowers of Evil came out and was prosecuted for obscenity. Richard Wagner stayed there working on The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, and a young Oscar Wilde stayed in 1883, full of plans, long before the hotel where we will meet him later.
The bouquinistes have sold books along these quays since the sixteenth century. Before the 2024 Olympic opening ceremony, the authorities wanted to remove their boxes for security, and after a public outcry the plan was dropped. Walk east along the river onto Quai Malaquais, then turn right into Rue Bonaparte, to the gates of the most famous art school in France.