Underground & cool · Free sculptor's studio-museum · € · 6e · Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Musée Zadkine
Ossip Zadkine carved in this low cottage off rue d'Assas from 1928 to 1967, and his Cubist figures now stand among the plane trees of its small garden as if they grew there. One of only a handful of intact artists' studios left in the city.
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The garden alone is free and rarely crowded — a workable lunch stop near the Luxembourg.
Getting there
- Vavin4380 m · 7 min walk
- Port RoyalRER B400 m · 8 min walk
- Notre-Dame-des-Champs12440 m · 8 min walk
Around the corner
Closerie des Lilas · 30 m away
The Closerie des Lilas is a famous Parisian restaurant located on the Boulevard du Montparnasse in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It was opened in 1847 by François Bullier and was a simple brasserie at the beginning. Initially, it was named after a theatre piece called La Closerie des Genets by Frédéric Soulié. It progressively evolved into the Closerie des Lilas because its owner, Bullier, used to plant lilac flowers.
Wikipedia ↗Walks that pass nearby
- Literary Cafésstop 5 of 7 · 30 m
La Closerie des Lilas
Hemingway's actual office. He wrote much of The Sun Also Rises at a corner table — there's a brass plate marking it. Verlaine drank himself into trouble at the bar; Lenin played chess in the back room; Modigliani sketched the waiters.
Brass plates on the bar mark the regulars' spots. Hemingway's is on the right side; Trotsky's nearby. The bar (zinc-counter, no reservation) is far more atmospheric than the dining room. Get a drink there before the long walk south to Montparnasse.
- Bouillons & Brasseriesstop 6 of 6 · 410 m
La Coupole
102 Boulevard du Montparnasse, 1927. Already a stop on the Literary Cafés tour, but worth ending here for dinner — the Art Deco columns light up at night and the lamb curry has been on the menu, unchanged, since opening.
Reserve in advance. Ask for a table along the perimeter so you can see the painted columns properly. Don't skip the curry just because it's been on the menu for a century — that's the point.
- Saint-Germain in 90 minutesstop 3 of 6 · 630 m
Jardin du Luxembourg
The garden of the French Senate, opened to the public 1612. 23 hectares with a central octagonal fountain, sailboat pond (the wooden boats can be rented for €4), beehives, an orchard with 1,000+ apple varieties, and the Marie de Médicis fountain (1630, statuary of Polyphemus surprising the lovers).
Enter from the north (Rue de Vaugirard side). Walk to the central fountain first — children with rented sailboats every weekend. The Médicis fountain is in a small alleyway off the east side, almost always missed; one of the most romantic spots in central Paris.
Within a few minutes' walk
Where to stay near Musée Zadkine
- Hôtel des Académies et des ArtsBoutique hotel€€ · 5 minTwenty rooms on the Montparnasse street where Modigliani and Foujita kept studios and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière still teaches life drawing. Sculpture and contemporary works through the rooms, a small courtyard.
- Hôtel Raspail MontparnasseArt Deco boutique hotel€€ · 6 minAn Art Deco building at the Raspail–Montparnasse crossroads, in the quarter the painters actually worked — Modigliani, Man Ray, the Montparnos. Several upper rooms look toward the Montparnasse tower.
- Hôtel AiglonArt Deco design hotel€€ · 9 minA 1930s building on Boulevard Raspail that takes its Art Deco seriously: a 2023 redo brought 46 bespoke bathroom mosaics and an entrance fresco by Mathilde Jonquière. Raspail métro across the road, Montparnasse cemetery a block south.
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The district · 6e
Saint-Germain-des-Prés — The literary Left BankThe cafés where the existentialists held court — Flore, Deux Magots, Lipp — plus the Luxembourg Gardens and the city's densest run of galleries and antiquaires. Expensive, polished, and aware of it.
Best for: Those who want the postcard Left Bank and have the budget for it.
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