Paris Literature Tour – Hemingway & Friends

A book lover’s delight, this tour kicks off outside the Café de Flore, the legendary café located in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It continues through the Rive Gauche, the intellectual nerve center of Paris and the stomping grounds of Lost Generation personalities like Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. After visiting Oscar Wilde’s place of death, you’ll enjoy the charming cobbled streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and discover where Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire had fiery philosophical debates with their contemporaries. Continuing on to the Odéon area you’ll see the address where Sylvia Beach founded a legendary bookstore and artistic paradise called Shakespeare and Company. This shop no longer exists, but the spirit of its regular customers like James Joyce, Paul Valéry, and André Gide still lingers in this cozy cave of literature. Then, passing by the University of La Sorbonne where Sartre taught existentialist philosophy, you’ll discover the Latin Quarter and the favorite places of Hemingway and Joyce that inspired the movie Midnight in Paris.  Your visit will end around the current Shakespeare and Company location, hailed by many visitors as their favorite bookshop in all of Europe. In this former medieval monastery, English-language books inhabit every nook and cranny.