A comfortable scent of cherry blossom envelops Maison Colbert. Between that floral sweetness and the backyard that surrounds its entrance entrance, which is flanked by tables good for afternoon tea, the Seventeenth-century residence appears to stay in a perpetual spring. That’s even the case when there’s a torrential rain outdoors that soaks the golden plaque that commemorates its most illustrious visitor, Simone de Beauvoir. More than seven a long time have handed for the reason that Parisian writer and thinker lived on this Neoclassical home within the French capital, which has since been transformed into luxurious lodging by the Meliá Collection lodge chain.
The presence of Madame Beauvoir can nonetheless be felt between its partitions, similar to her legacy and the concepts that populate her 1949 e-book The Second Sex (1949). Those partitions at the moment are painted in pastel tones and turquoise, and enclose the fashionable furnishings and mid-century notes of the lodge’s rooms. It was right here, on the highest ground of the constructing, now residence to the lodge’s most grand suite, the place the famed author conceived of the work that may change into the culminating level of latest feminism, and generated as a lot upheaval and controversy because it did gross sales, with conceptual sentences like: “One will not be born, however slightly turns into, a lady.” The period’s existentialism, the maturity of a life coming into its forties, and the feminist activism working by means of her veins fueled the textual content of almost one thousand pages, which bore the mark of the Gallimard publishing home on its first version.
The Second Sex was additionally a hopeful reflection of a France that had been liberated after World War II, and which de Beauvoir noticed from her condominium at 7 Rue de l’Hôtel Colbert within the fifth arrondissement, within the coronary heart of the Latin Quarter. This quiet avenue, which results in the Quai de Montebello, the capital’s well-known promenade that runs alongside the Left Bank of the Seine, provides privileged views of its most well-known cathedral, Notre Dame, which reopened its doorways final December after struggling fireplace injury in 2019. The space owes its identify to the Latin-speaking college students and lecturers of the Sorbonne through the Middle Ages, and which within the mid-Twentieth century continued as a hub for data and creativity within the metropolis.
The ambiance of this thousand-year-old neighborhood that impressed Beauvoir in her feminist battle has ignited a mess of different writers and poets, a lot of whom have taken Parisian refuge within the Shakespeare and Company bookstore (Rue de la Bûcherie 37). Since its opening in 1951, the historic retailer, which occupies a former 18th-century monastery, has been a pilgrimage web site for literary greats like Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce, along with serving as an mental set for quite a few movies, amongst them the second installment of Richard Linklater’s Before saga, Before Sunset (2004) and the French bohemian fantasy that Woody Allen created in Midnight in Paris (2011).
Homage to the grasp of lights
Though it carries the final identify of Louis XIV’s finance minister, Jean Baptiste Colbert, there isn’t any proof that the economist was ever the proprietor of the noble residence, which was inbuilt 1637. Initially conceived as un hôtel particulier, Maison Colbert nonetheless options authentic plaster flower garlands that beautify the home windows of the primary of its 4 flooring. Its imposing Neoclassical façade was residence to the Turgenev Russian Library in 1938, till the collections of probably the most European of the nice Russian writers have been confiscated throughout World War II.
Nearly 20 years afterwards, its roofs and façade have been acknowledged as a part of the town’s historic heritage, a everlasting assignation that architects Álvaro Sans and his daughter Adriana Sans highlighted of their modernization of its amenities. The remainder of Latin Quarter, which can be identified for having been the hang-out of the Impressionist painters, together with Renoir, served as main inspiration for the renovation of the constructing, which takes as its theme the work of Spanish Impressionist painter Joaquín Sorolla. “We needed to offer the lodge a Spanish really feel, however linked to the historical past of Paris,” explains Álvaro Sans. “The concept got here from an impressive exhibition of Sorolla’s work on the Reina Sofía in Madrid. We instantly felt that the sunshine within the work would assist us deliver colour and pleasure to the interiors by means of the eyes of a terrific Spanish painter, and hyperlink them to the historical past of style within the French capital.”
Seven colours attribute of the painter’s work impressed the palette of the rooms, the hallways and the foyer, together with the coral and sky blue that suffused Sorolla’s well-known scenes of the Mediterranean coast. Reproductions of his works from the beginning of the Twentieth century, like Under the awning on the seaside at Zarauz, which is dominated by sandy shades; and Women strolling on the seaside, which reveals the period’s bohemian affect through the figures’ attire, together with different household scenes in Biarritz and Valencia, occupy almost 50 places within the rooms and customary areas of the lodge, serving as connection to that artwork de vivre so emblematic of Paris.
The grand María Sorolla suite, named in tribute to the painter’s mom, consists of in its 580 sq. ft the room the place Simone de Beauvoir additionally wrote prolonged novel The Mandarins(1954), exploring the brand new function of that group of French intellectuals on the finish of World War II. Clotilde García del Castillo, Sorolla’s muse and partner who the artist painted till the tip of his life (a lot of his drawings of her wearing high fashion cling all through the constructing), is the opposite feminine protagonist of the Maison. Its very reception space welcomes future friends with {a photograph} of the elegant bourgeois lady, a key determine in Sorolla’s worldwide repute even after his dying in 1923, alongside her husband.
It isn’t any coincidence that this muse’s first identify can be that of the lodge’s restaurant, which is run by Nina Métayer, acknowledged because the world’s finest pastry chef in 2024 by The World’s 50 Best Restaurant awards. With a menu that pays tribute to the most effective of French pastries to take pleasure in at a day tea or Sunday brunch, Café Clotilde is the right place to finish a day filled with the exterior experiences supplied by the lodge, similar to a non-public cruise on the Seine, a wine tasting within the former Seventeenth-century wine cellar now occupied the restaurant Sola (Rue de l’Hôtel Colbert 12), discovering the nice monuments of the town like Grand Palais, the Eiffel Tower and Place Vendôme inside a classic automotive, and a tour of artisanal workshops hidden away within the historic Montmartre district. This is the Paris that, century after century, continues to encourage an infinite variety of artists.
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