Maison de Victor Hugo

The house stands in the south-east corner of the place Royale, the square that Henri IV laid out at the start of the seventeenth century and that was renamed the place des Vosges in 1800. The plot was granted in 1605; the house passed through several owners before the Rohan-Guéménée family acquired it, and it kept their name long after their bankruptcy forced its sale in the 1780s.

In 1832 Victor Hugo, thirty years old and already the leader of the Romantic theatre, took a large apartment on the second floor with his wife Adèle and their four children. He stayed until 1848. The years here were his most public: he entered the Académie française, was made a peer of France, and was elected a deputy for Paris. Lamartine, Vigny, Dumas, Mérimée and Sainte-Beuve came up the stairs. He wrote Ruy Blas and Les Burgraves here, collections of poems, and much of what became Les Misérables. In 1843 news came that his daughter Léopoldine had drowned in the Seine at Villequier with her young husband; the grief runs through the poems of Les Contemplations.

In 1902, the centenary of Hugo’s birth, his friend and executor Paul Meurice gave the City of Paris the collection that founded a museum, and the City installed it in the apartment Hugo had rented. It opened on 30 June 1903. The furnishings Hugo had used had been sold at auction in 1852, after he went into exile, so the rooms are an evocation rather than a reconstruction, with his drawings, manuscripts, and the extraordinary Chinese drawing room he designed for Juliette Drouet’s house in Guernsey, reassembled here.

The museum has a twin. In 1927 Hugo’s descendants gave the City of Paris Hauteville House, the house in Saint Peter Port on Guernsey where he lived in exile from 1856 to 1870 and which he decorated himself, room by room. Both are run by Paris Musées. The Paris house reopened in November 2020 after renovation.

What to look for

• The Chinese drawing room, designed by Hugo for Juliette Drouet in Guernsey and rebuilt here.
• Hugo’s own ink-wash drawings, dark and visionary.
• The view over the place des Vosges from the second-floor windows.
• The arcade beneath the house, part of Henri IV’s continuous ring of arcades around the square.

Timeline

1. 1605The plot on the place Royale is granted
2. 1832Victor Hugo rents the second-floor apartment
3. 1843Death of Léopoldine at Villequier
4. 1848Hugo leaves the place des Vosges
5. 1903The museum opens on 30 June, from Paul Meurice’s gift of 1902
6. 1927Hugo’s descendants give Hauteville House to the City of Paris

Works to see here

Art →

Plaques within 250 m

• 6 Place Des Vosges · 20 m

  VICTOR HUGO / HABITA DANS CET HOTEL / DE 1833 À 1848

• 8 Place Des Vosges · 30 m

  Le poète Théophile Gautier a vécu dans cette maison de 1828 à 1834

• 14 Place Des Vosges · 80 m

  Hôtel de Villedeuil siège de la huitième mairie de 1793 à 1860

• 1 Place Des Vosges · 80 m

  Dans cet hôtel est née le 6 février 1626 Marie de Rabutin-Chantal marquise de Sévigné

• 56 Rue De Turenne · 160 m

  Ici mourut Paul Scarron poète burlesque et romancier 1610-1660. Le cercle Scarron MCMLIX

• 5 Rue Saint-Antoine · 190 m

  Ici était l'entrée de l'avant cour de la Bastille par laquelle les assaillants pénétrèrent dans la forteresse le 14 juillet 1789

• 16 Rue Beautreillis · 230 m

  VICTORIEN SARDOU / AUTEUR DRAMATIQUE / EST NÉ DANS CETTE MAISON / LE 5 SEPTEMBRE 1831

• 3 Place De La Bastille · 230 m

  PLAN DE LA BASTILLE COMMENCÉE EN 1370 / PRISE PAR LE PEUPLE LE 14 JUILLET 1789 / ET DÉMOLIE LA MÊME ANNÉE/ (PLAN EN QUESTION DESSINÉ) /LE PÉRIMÈTRE DE LA FORTERESSE / EST TRACÉ SUR LE SOL DE CETTE PLACE / 14 JUILLET 1880

Commemorative plaques, Ville de Paris open data (ODbL); transcriptions as published, in French. 10 in all within this radius.

Sources

• Maisons de Victor Hugo (Paris Musées): History of Hauteville House
• Maisons de Victor Hugo (Paris Musées): Decors created by Victor Hugo
• Ville de Paris: Hauteville, la maison de Victor Hugo à Guernesey
• Ministère de la Culture, POP (Mérimée): Hôtel de Rohan-Guéménée, PA00086272
• Evous: L’hôtel de Rohan-Guéménée
• Wikipédia: Maison de Victor Hugo
• Wikidata Q2599177 (coordinates, CC0)