Test yourself: Can you match these six well-known authors to their French homes?
What better way to immerse yourself in the lives of the great writers than to see the places where they lived and worked, from Voltaire to Victor Hugo
Guess which writers lived in these houses that you can visit in France
Emilie Molinero / Patrick Tournebœuf / Benjamin Gavaudo / Raphaël Chipault
France takes its literary heritage seriously. Writers are respected, along with their thoughts on life, love and everything in between.
When it comes to reading, French book clubs abound, as do online resources, forums and groups, but nothing beats starting with the greats.
Getting out there, visiting writers’ houses where you can breathe in the atmosphere of old ink and parchment in rooms where classic novels were written by candlelight, is truly inspiring. It is also a great way to kickstart your knowledge of French literary culture.
Can you guess which famous authors lived in each of these houses, which can be visited in France?
Note: Use the arrows to scroll between photos.
1. An atmospheric second-floor apartment
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A) Victor Hugo -
Victor Hugo’s house is found in the Place des Vosges. The second-floor apartment he lived in from 1832 to 1848 contains a museum designed to give something of the atmosphere during the writer’s residence.
You can think of him as the French equivalent of Charles Dickens. He was a prolific writer, producing The Hunchback of Notre Dame as well as Les Misérables. He also produced more than 4,000 drawings during his lifetime, and was a committed politician, lobbying for the abolition of capital punishment and slavery.
Tickets to the permanent exhibition are free, you only have to pay for temporary exhibitions and special events. Check the website when planning to visit because the museum organises conferences, guided tours, and discovery games for children two or three times a month.
There is a café and a garden where you can sit and relax after the visit. While on the Victor Hugo trail, note that he is buried in the Panthéon, which would make a logical next visit if you are having a literary day out in Paris.
2. A view of the Eiffel Tower
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A) Honoré de Balzac -
Another literary offering in Paris, the Maison de Balzac, will be mainly of interest to fans of Honoré de Balzac’s work.
He was at the forefront of developing literary realism, writing truthfully without resorting to supernatural elements or magic, or literary conceits. He was vastly influential on writers including Emile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert and Henry James.
3. Perfectly preserved in Nohunt
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A) George Sand -
The female author, George Sand, lived in Nohunt (Indre). After her death in 1876, her descendants lived there until it was sold to the State in 1952, and is preserved almost as she left it. Walking through the rooms she worked and played in with Chopin and her children, you get a real sense of her personality. The puppet theatre, the book-lined walls, the musical instruments and the dining room all look how they would have done when the writer lived there.
Today, Sand is best known for dressing in men’s clothes and being Chopin’s lover, but in her time she was more famous in the UK than either Hugo or Balzac. A prolific writer, she produced 70 novels and more than 50 volumes of short stories, plays, essays and political texts.
Sadly, it is only possible to see the house in a large group with a French-speaking guide who hustles you through the rooms as quickly as possible. But you can tarry at the tail-end of the group and get some idea of the atmosphere. The extensive gardens are also well worth viewing.
4. The Château Ferney
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A) Voltaire -
Travel east, practically to the Swiss border, and you can visit the Château Ferney in Ain, which Voltaire bought in 1758 and where he spent most of his last 20 years.
Incredibly prolific, he produced around 2,000 books and pamphlets, and 20,000 letters. His work encompasses plays, poems, novels, essays, history and even science.
The chateau offers guided tours in French, and an auto-guide on a tablet in multiple languages, but English-speaking visitors will probably get most out of the visit if they do some research on Voltaire beforehand.
The rooms are nicely furnished and give a good idea of the atmosphere during Voltaire’s lifetime. The gardens are spectacular with views of Mont Blanc.
Check the website before visiting because the Château organises regular temporary exhibitions.
Look out for Fantaisies Pour un Palais (Fantasies for a Palace), which runs until May 11.
5. Sweet house offering cooking workshops
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A) Colette -
A visit to Colette’s birthplace is fascinating, although it really only illuminates one side of her writing – bucolic life in the countryside, as evidenced in her Claudine series.
The house in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye (Yonne) is very sweet. This is a writer’s home, not a museum, and it is so well renovated that it really doesn’t take much work to imagine the family still in residence, enjoying all its modest comforts.
Entries are limited and visitors have to take a guided tour, so it is best to reserve tickets in advance as sometimes there are none available. One of the nicest ways to visit is to book a cooking workshop.
Colette wrote various pamphlets during World War Two encouraging people to cook with no waste, and the workshops in her childhood kitchen offer the chance to cook according to those recipes.
Every October, the house also hosts the two-day Festival International des Ecrits de Femmes. The website has details of forthcoming events.
6. Nostalgic childhood summers with Aunt Léonie
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A) Marcel Proust -
Aunt Léonie’s house in Illiers-Combray is an interesting one to visit. Immortalised by Marcel Proust in his novel A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time), it is where he spent his childhood summers. (His parents sent him there due to his delicate health, he had severe asthma).
The house has been renovated to look as it did when Proust was a child, and is
simultaneously a museum tracing the writer’s life and times. You can also visit the gardens, which are lovely.
The museum is owned and run by the Societé des Amis de Marcel Proust, so if you take the guided tour (in French) you’re quite likely to be talking to an extremely knowledgeable enthusiast who will tell you all sorts of details about the house, and little Marcel and his aunt Léonie.
As an adult, Proust would write about how the memory of the taste of his aunt’s madeleines could take him back to his childhood. Even today, the expression ‘Proust’s Madeleine’ refers to something which triggers nostalgic memories.
Needless to say, patisseries in the area all sell ‘Madeleines de Proust’ and very delicious they are, too.
