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café called Le Comptoir des Sts-Pères, which under normal circumstances would not deserve a second glance. But this was the fashionable restaurant Michaud’s, where Hemingway stood outside watching Joyce and his family dine and, later, when he was on the inside looking out, where a memorable event may – or may not – have taken place. According to Hemingway in his A Moveable Feast, the writer F Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), concerned about not being able to sexually satisfy his wife, Zelda, asked Hemingway to inspect him in the café’s toilet. ‘It is not basically a question of the size in repose…’ Hemingway advised him, in what could be one of best examples of the ‘big lie’ in American literary history.

15 Église St-Sulpice Go south on rue des Saints Pères, then east on blvd St-Germain and south on rue Bonaparte. Follow it south past Église St-Sulpice, where a pivotal clue is left and a murder takes place in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. It eventually leads to the northwestern corner of the Jardin du Luxembourg, rue de Vaugirard and the Fontaine des Quatre Évêques (Fountain of the Four Bishops).

16 Gertrude Stein’s home After slumming it for a few years in the Latin Quarter, Hemingway and many other members of the so-called Lost Generation moved to this area. In 1925 William Faulkner (1897–1962) spent a few months at 42 rue de Vaugirard in what is now the posh Hôtel Luxembourg Parc. Hemingway spent his last few years in Paris in a rather grand flat at 6 rue Férou, within easy striking (the operative word, as they had fallen out – and big time – by then) distance of 27 rue de Fleurus, where the American novelist Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) first lived with her brother Leo, and then her lifelong companion, Alice B Toklas, for 35 years. Stein entertained such luminaries as Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Gauguin, Pound and of course the young Hemingway and Hadley, who were treated as though they were ‘very good, well-mannered and promising children’ according to the latter. It’s odd to think that this splendid belle époque block (1894) was less than 10 years old when Stein first moved here in 1903.

17 Rue Notre Dame des Champs Ezra Pound (1885–1972) lived not far away at 70bis rue Notre Dame des Champs in a flat filled with Japanese paintings and with packing crates posing as furniture, as did Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) in the same flat in 1934. Hemingway’s first apartment in this part of town was above a sawmill at 113 rue Notre Dames des Champs, now part of the École Alsacienne (Alsatian School) complex. Further east is La Closerie des Lilas on blvd du Montparnasse, where Hemingway often met John Dos Passos or just sat alone, contemplating the Maréchal Ney statue in front of it.

18 Literary Cafés Port Royal metro station, where you might end the tour, is just opposite. West of here and clustered around place Pablo Picasso and Vavin metro station is a couple of café-restaurants that have hosted more literary luminaries than any others in the world: Le Dôme and, as Jake Barnes puts it in The Sun Also Rises, ‘that new dive, the Select’ Click here. Just off blvd Raspail at 10 rue Delambre is the former Dingo Bar, now a restaurant. It was here that Hemingway, the ambitious, middle-class kid from the Midwest, and Fitzgerald, the well-heeled, dissolute Princeton graduate, met for the first time, became friends (of sorts) and went on to change the face of American literature. For at least one of us, the erstwhile Dingo is a church.

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SHOPPING

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LOUVRE & LES HALLES

MARAIS & BASTILLE

THE ISLANDS

LATIN QUARTER & JARDIN DES PLANTES

ST-GERMAIN, ODÉON & LUXEMBOURG

MONTPARNASSE

FAUBOURG ST-GERMAIN & INVALIDES

ÉTOILE & CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES

OPÉRA & GRANDS BOULEVARDS

GARE DU NORD, GARE DE L’EST & RÉPUBLIQUE

GARE DE LYON, NATION & BERCY

15E ARRONDISSEMENT

MONTMARTRE & PIGALLE

BEYOND CENTRAL PARIS

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top picks

E Dehillerin

La Maison de l’Astronomie

Fromagerie Alléosse

Julien, Caviste

Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville

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Deyrolle