Three Literary Places to Visit in Paris

My Paris Stories

In those days there was no money to buy books. Books you borrowed from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company, which was the library and bookstore of Sylvia Beach at 12 rue de l’Odéon. On a cold windswept street, this was a lovely, warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books, new books in the window, and photographs on the wall of famous writers both dead and living. The photographs all looked like snapshots and even the dead writers looked as though they had really been alive.
—Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast

Paris has always been a favourite place for writers, poets, and thinkers, and the city is filled with interesting places for lovers of literature to visit.

Shakespeare and Company

This bookshop was originally situated at 12 rue de l’Odeon in the 6th Arrondissement when it was founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919.

It was frequented by Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce, by many others, and Beach was the first to publish Joyce’s groundbreaking nove…