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House of Nicolas Flamel

Oldest Paris · 3rd arrondissement

House of Nicolas Flamel

A charity house of 1407 built by a Paris scrivener whom later centuries turned into an alchemist. Its tenants owed him prayers.

Photo: Fanfwah, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Nicolas Flamel was a real Parisian, and a fairly ordinary one. Born around 1330 or 1340, he worked as a public scribe and copyist, then as a sworn bookseller attached to the University, with a stall and later a house by the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie. He married a widow, Pernelle, around 1370. Between his trade, her property and shrewd investment in houses, the childless couple did well, and in later life Flamel spent freely on pious works: a portal for his parish church, arcades in the Cemetery of the Innocents, and houses for the poor.

This is the one that survives. Completed in 1407, ten years after Pernelle’s death, it was built with shops on the ground floor and lodgings above for poor working people. The rent was spiritual. A line of Gothic lettering under the first-floor cornice tells the ‘men and women labourers’ who lived in the house that they must say a Paternoster and an Ave Maria every day for the souls of the poor departed. Flamel himself never lived here; he died in 1418 and was buried in Saint-Jacques. His engraved tombstone, which spent years as a greengrocer’s counter after the church was demolished, is now in the Musée de Cluny.

The alchemist came later. Rumour inflated Flamel’s fortune within a generation of his death, and by the sixteenth century writers were reading his carved arcades at the Innocents as coded recipes. In 1612 a book of ‘hieroglyphic figures', published under his name, gave him the philosopher’s stone and a life of transmutation; historians regard it as a forgery. The legend has never stopped growing, as far as the pages of Harry Potter.

The house itself has been altered. The tall gable that once gave it the name ‘Grand Pignon’ was taken down in a restoration before the 1900 Exposition universelle, and the windows were changed. The façade was listed in 1911, and a restaurant occupies the ground floor.

It is often called the oldest house in Paris. That is a claim, not a fact. It is the oldest house whose date is fixed by an inscription, and the state register calls it ‘probably’ the oldest; but the half-timbered houses of rue François-Miron and other buildings have had their champions, and medieval fabric survives inside many later façades.

What to look for

  • The inscription in Gothic letters running under the cornice above the ground floor.
  • Flamel’s initials, N and F, carved on the door jambs.
  • The four angel musicians framing the central doorway.
  • The small carved figures with scrolls on the pillars between the old shop openings.
Photo: Tangopaso, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

  1. c. 1370Nicolas Flamel marries Pernelle (uncertain date)
  2. 1397Death of Pernelle
  3. 1407House completed, dated by its inscription
  4. 1418Death of Nicolas Flamel
  5. 1612The ‘hieroglyphic figures’ book launches the alchemist legend
  6. 1911Façade listed as a historic monument

Plaques within 250 m

  • 51 Rue De Montmorency · 10 m
    MAISON DE NICOLAS FLAMEL/ET DE PERNELLE SA FEMME/POUR CONSERVER LE SOUVENIR/DELEUR FONDATION CHARITABLE/LA VILLE DE PARIS A RESTAURÉ EN 1900/L'INSCRIPTION PRIMITIVE/DATÉE DE 1407
  • 203 Bis Rue Saint-Martin · 50 m
    LE SAVANT/GUILLAUME BUDÉ/ L'UN DES FONDATEURS'DU COLLÈGE DE France/PRÉVOT DES MARCHANDS/NÉ À PARIS EN 1467/ EST MORT/LE 25 AOUT 1540/DANS L'HOTEL/ QUI S'ÉLEVAIT/SUR CET EMPLACEMENT
  • 48, Rue Chapon · 120 m
    LE 14 AOUT 1944/S'EST TENUE DANS CET IMMEUBLE/UNE RENCONTRE/DES ORGANISATIONS DE LA RESISTANCE/DE LA POLICE PARISIENNE/EN PRESENCE DU /COLONEL ROL-TANGUY/CHEF REGIONAL F.F.I./QUI DECIDA DE L'ENTREE DES POLICIERS/DANS LE COMBAT INSURRECTIONNEL/POUR LA LIBERATION DE PARIS
  • Angle Rues Bachaumont Et Montorgueil · 130 m
    LE 4 JANVIER 1750 / RUE MONTORGUEIL / ENTRE LA RUE SAINT-SAUVEUR / ET L’ANCIENNE RUE BEAUREPAIRE / FURENT ARRÊTÉS / BRUNO LENOIR ET JEAN DIOT / CONDAMNÉS POUR HOMOSEXUALITÉ / ILS FURENT BRÛLÉS EN PLACE DE GRÈVE / LE 6 JUILLET 1750 / CE FUT LA DERNIÈRE EX
  • 8 Rue Bernard De Clairvaux · 140 m
    LE DEFENSEUR DU TEMPS/HORLOGE A AUTOMATES/COMMANDÉE PAR LA COGEDIM/A JACQUES MONESTIER EN 1975, /INAUGURÉE LE 8 OCTOBRE 1979/PAR LE MAIRE DE PARIS/JACQUES CHIRAC
  • 168 Rue Saint Martin · 180 m
    ICI / EST NÉ / LE POÈTE / GÉRARD DE NERVAL / 1808-1855
  • 48 Boulevard De Sébastopol · 210 m
    DANS LES SOUS-SOLS DE CET IMMEUBLE EN SEPTEMBRE 1940 AU 17 AOUT 1944/LE MOUVEMENT "RÉSISTANCE" DU 3EME ARRT AVAIT SON SIÈGE/PENDANT L'INSURRECTION DE PARIS, CE FUT LE POSTE DE COMMANDEMENT/DU GROUPE SÉBASTOPOL ET FILIALES
  • 18 Rue Chapon · 230 m
    PIERRE PACHET/écrivain et essayiste/vécut dans cet immeuble/de 1977 à 2016

Commemorative plaques, Ville de Paris open data (ODbL); transcriptions as published, in French.

Sources

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