Around the Musée Nissim de Camondo: the Monceau quarter

I live near Villiers and walk through Parc Monceau most mornings, so this is the part of the site I can write without notes. The quarter was built in a hurry in the 1860s and 1870s by the banking families who arrived with the Second Empire, and it has kept its character better than most of Haussmann’s Paris. It is quiet, expensive-looking, and short on the things guidebooks call attractions. That suits it.

Rue de Monceau

Start at Métro Villiers and walk down rue de Monceau. No. 63 is the Camondo, shut behind hoardings for now; the closure page has the dates. No. 61 next door was Abraham-Behor de Camondo’s house. A few doors up at no. 81 is the Hôtel Ephrussi, home of the family whose story Edmund de Waal told in The Hare with Amber Eyes before he wrote Letters to Camondo about his neighbour. Three banking houses in a hundred metres, and the street still has the width and hush they built it for.

Parc Monceau

The park was laid out from 1778 for the Duc de Chartres as a garden of follies, and the Naumachie, a curved colonnade beside an oval pond, survives from that first scheme. Haussmann redesigned it in 1861 and the Camondos and Ephrussis built on plots carved from its edge. The rotunda at the boulevard de Courcelles gate is by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. Inside are gilded gates, a fragment of Renaissance arcade rescued from the old Hôtel de Ville, and statues of Chopin, Maupassant and Gounod. It has its own page; here I will only say that the Camondo’s garden façade is visible from inside the park, and that this is the one view of the house nobody can close.

Musée Cernuschi

On the park’s east side, at 7 avenue Vélasquez, is the Musée Cernuschi, a City of Paris museum of Asian art housed in another collector’s mansion. The permanent collection is free. It is the natural pairing with the Camondo because it is the same kind of place, a rich man’s house turned public, with the opposite collection inside. Details on the City’s museum pages at paris.fr.

Musée Jacquemart-André

Ten minutes south, at 158 boulevard Haussmann, the Musée Jacquemart-André is the mansion of a collecting couple of the 1870s, and while the Camondo is closed it is the closest thing in Paris to the experience the Camondo offers: a private house, its collection in place, in the same quarter. The collections differ (Italian Renaissance and French 18th century there, French 18th century alone at the Camondo), and the house is larger and grander. Check opening days on musee-jacquemart-andre.com before you go.

Saint-Augustin and the boulevard

South of the Jacquemart-André, the church of Saint-Augustin closes the view down the boulevard Malesherbes with its iron-framed dome, one of the landmarks of Haussmann’s rebuilding. The private Haussmann walk I have reviewed comes this way, from Opéra along boulevard Haussmann to Saint-Augustin, the Jacquemart-André and finally Parc Monceau. It ends where this page begins, which is why it is the widget at the bottom.

A half-day in the quarter

1. Métro Villiers (lines 2 and 3). Walk down rue de Monceau past nos. 81, 63 and 61.
2. Into Parc Monceau by the nearest gate. Find the Camondo’s garden façade, then the Naumachie, then the Ledoux rotunda at the Courcelles gate.
3. Out on the east side to the Musée Cernuschi. Allow an hour.
4. Walk south to boulevard Haussmann and the Jacquemart-André. Allow an hour and a half, plus the tearoom if it is open.
5. Finish at Saint-Augustin, or continue down the boulevard to Opéra if you have legs left.

Done at a walking pace that is about four hours, and it works in reverse if you are coming from the Opéra end. The best months are April to October, when the park is open late and the evenings are long; in winter the park closes early and the walk is shorter and colder, though rue de Monceau is handsome under a grey sky. My view on whether the quarter is worth the trip without the house is on the worth visiting page.

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