Team Marco Polo

Hemingway in Paris

Friday, June 14, 2024 by teammarcopolo

Ernest Hemingway came to Paris in the 1920s on Sherwood Anderson’s advice to go to Paris and meet Gertrude Stein. The advice began one of the most influential careers in the history of literature. Today, we fashioned a Hemingway Literary walk that began with his first apartment on Rue Notre Dame de les Champs and finished on the Left Bank at Shakespeare and Co., the bookstore that took its name from Sylvia Beach’s store of the same name. Here was our itinerary:

Hemingway in Paris Tour

171 boulevard du montparnasse Closerie des Lilias-Cafe featured in “The Sun Also Rises”
113 rue Notre dame des champs-Hemingway’s first apartment in Paris
74 Cardinal Lemoine-2nd apartment, where he lived longest, where Hadley had Bumby
Rue Mouffetard-Market streets which he described as “a cesspool.”
27 Rue des Fleurus-Gertrude Stein’s apartment & salon, featured in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” It was here that young Hemingway met, and began to disdain, the ex-pat American literary society.
Luxembourg Gardens–Park where Hemingway caught a pigeon to eat
Les Deux Magots–Cafe where older Hemingway hung out after WWII
Shakespeare & co (rue odeon)–Original site of Sylvia Beach’s bookstore, now gone. Beach published James Joyces Ulysses which made her ground zero for the Lost Generation literary movement. When they weren’t drunk (and sometimes when they were), ex-pat American writers such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway were often found here. Interestingly, the site also features a plaque to American pamphleteer Thomas Paine, who lived there after the French Revolution.
Shakespeare & Co. (Left Bank)–Across from Notre Dame, bookstore that took its name from the original. Home to backpackers and writer wanna-be’s, the store stamps as books as proof that pilgrims have made the last stop on their Hemingway journey.