Many celebrities have fallen in love in Paris, here are some famous couples who have made the capital the place where their eyes met.
© Studio TTG
Victor Hugo fell headlong in love with the young actress Juliette Drouet during a rehearsal of his play Lucrezia Borgia in 1833. They embarked on a passionate relationship, which would last for 50 years – a half-century of such intense love that the actress would never again live at a distance of more than 500 metres from her lover. Victor Hugo lived on Place des Vosges, and so Juliette Drouet moved to Rue Sainte-Anastase. When he went to live in Rue de la Tour-d’Auvergne, she moved to Rue Rodier; when he started living in Rue de la Rochefoucauld, she chose a house in Rue Pigalle. The Maison Victor Hugo displays many objects illustrating their passion, and some of the 22,000 love letters Juliette Drouet wrote to Hugo.
© Justine O
In 1968, Jane Birkin was living at the Hôtel Esmeralda a short distance from Notre Dame Cathedral when Serge Gainsbourg went to pick her up to take her out to dinner at Maxim’s. The singer wasn’t in love with her; the dinner was an attempt on his part to improve their relationship, which had been quite stormy since the beginning of the film shoot on which they had met. But, as he watched the young woman walk down the old wooden staircase, he fell under her spell. A few hours later the couple exchanged their first kiss on Port de Montebello, in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. They lived together for ten years at 5 bis, Rue de Verneuil which has recently become La Maison Gainsbourg, open to visitors. A heritage site offering a cultural space as well as a place to live and showcase the work of Serge Gainsbourg in all its facets.
© Marc Bertrand
The golden couple of French cinema lived for many years in a former shop known as ‘La Roulotte’ at 15 Place Dauphine, which appealed to Yves Montand because it evoked a peaceful Provençal square. The quiet of the 1st arrondissement was in keeping with the untroubled course of their decades-old marriage: walks in Square du Vert-Galant and lunches at ‘Paul’, a family-friendly restaurant where they met up nearly every day with friends from the movie and music worlds such as Serge Reggiani, Costa-Gavras, Luis Buñuel and Jacques Brel, or at the ‘Caveau du Palais’, a reputed fine-dining establishment on the Île de la Cité.
© Cécilia Lerouge
Two brilliant students met for the first time while attending the Sorbonne and the prestigious École Normale Supérieure on Rue d’Ulm – Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, who both passed the highly competitive agrégation examination in philosophy in 1929. The young couple had long discussions at the Médicis fountain in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and agreed they wanted an open relationship. They both lived at the Hôtel Mistral in Rue de Cels from 1937 to 1939 and at the Hôtel la Louisiane in Rue de Seine in 1943, but in separate rooms. Far from being the average couple, they were a duo who reigned over St-Germain-des-Prés. They were at the centre of the lively discussions involving artists and intellectuals of the time at the Café de Flore and the Deux-Magots.
© Succession Picasso - 2017
The Spanish painter Pablo Picasso met the Russian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova in 1917. They married the following year at the Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Rue Daru with Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob as their witnesses, then set up home together at 23 rue de la Boétie. Olga’s performances were a source of inspiration for the painter, and Picasso’s paintings depict how her style changed in the course of their 17-year relationship. His 1920 work Femme lisant, in the classical style, is infused with the sweetness of their early years. In Danse, which he painted in 1925, Picasso showcases the growing tension in their relationship and the influence of the Surrealist movement. From the 1930s onwards, Olga is depicted uniquely as a frightening and tormented woman. And yet this same woman had given up her career as a ballerina for a man who gradually abandoned her.
© Studio TTG
The lawyer and journalist Camille Desmoulins used to meet Lucile’s family in the course of his walks in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Some years later – Lucile having reached adulthood – he asked for her hand in marriage. Her father initially refused, but finally accepted in 1790. They were married at the Église St-Sulpice and went on to have a happy married life in Rue du Théâtre Français (now 22 rue de l’Odéon) in the company of their son Horace. Camille’s political views during the French Revolution led to him being imprisoned in March 1794, and then guillotined on 5 April of the same year together with Georges Danton. The execution took place on Place de la Révolution (now Place de la Concorde), and the last word he cried out was ‘Lucile!’
© Wikimedia
Alain Delon was at Orly airport in 1958 to receive the German actress Romy Schneider, his co-star in the film Christine, which was shot on a studio set at Boulogne-Billancourt. They fell in love during the shoot and were soon nicknamed ‘the European lovebirds’. The splendid young couple lived in a townhouse at 22 Avenue de Messine, where the actress encountered carefree, party-loving Parisian youth. Five years into their relationship, on returning from a journey abroad, Romy Schneider found some red roses on the table in their living room, together with a break-up letter ending both their love story and cinematic encounter.
© Colombe Clier MCC
The eyes of two writers met across a crowded room—in the Parisian brasserie La Coupole, in the midst of lively Montparnasse, in 1928. Their relationship began the very same evening at the Hôtel Istria in Rue Campagne-Première, where Elsa lived and met up with her friends, among them Man Ray, Picabia and Duchamp. The couple fascinated everyone they met in Paris between the wars. They published a slew of poems, translations, novels and articles, and became the leading intellectuals of the time. In 1951 they went to live in the Moulin de Villeneuve, now the Maison Elsa Triolet-Aragon, a place where their intimacy flourished, and which provided inspiration for their work.
