A walk in the footsteps of André Breton in Paris, surrealism incarnate in the city

André Breton saw Paris as a dream laboratory, a place of experimentation where reality bends to desire. Through alleyways, passages, workshops and street names, fragments of his Parisian itinerary are still alive today.

Embark on an exploration of André Breton's Paris, his homes, his workshops, his literary episodes and the posthumous gestures that maintain his aura in the City of Light.

Who was André Breton?

Founder of Surrealism, André Breton imposed a vision of the world in which dreams, chance and automatic writing were intertwined. Trained as a doctor, he frequented Dadaist circles before publishing the Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924, the birth certificate of an international artistic movement. From then on, his apartment at 42 rue Fontaine became a rallying point for artists from all over the world. Poet, essayist and collector, he remains a central figure in 20th-century art.

Places to discover in the footsteps of André Breton in Paris

17 place du Panthéon (5ᵉ arr.). He occupies a room on the fourth floor with Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon. It was here that together they experimented withautomatic writing, a veritable poetic rupture and collective invention.

42 rue Pierre-Fontaine (9ᵉ arr.). It was in this apartment-workshop, a stone's throw from Montmartre, that from 1922 to 1966, he set up his "universe of objects" made up of works of art, masks, curiosities, books and finds of all kinds. And it was here that, for decades, he welcomed his Surrealist friends - Éluard, Aragon, De Chirico, Man Ray - and perpetuated his space for reflection. The apartment served as a residence, studio, artistic meeting place and cabinet of curiosities - with its famous'Breton wall'.

• To be read
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The Paris of his writings. In his autobiographical novel Nadja, Breton makes Paris a floating character, a place of poetic apparitions and detours - through, among other things, Paris passages such as the Passage Jouffroy (9ᵉ arr.) and the Passage Verdeau (9ᵉ arr.).

Batignolles cemetery (17ᵉ arr.). André Breton died on September 28, 1966 in Paris, having been brought back from his refuge at Saint-Cirq-Lapopie in the Lot region. He is buried in the Batignolles cemetery, in a simple tomb decorated with a starry octahedron, with the poetic phrase "Je cherche l'or du temps" (I seek the gold of time) as his epitaph.

Place André-Breton (9ᵉ arr.).

L'allée André-Breton (1ᵉ arr.), located in the Nelson-Mandela garden.

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