(Paris) In Paris, 5 bis rue de Verneuil has become a legendary address. And a place of meditation. Serge Gainsbourg’s house, soon open to the public, is inseparable from the singer and his work.
In this artery of the chic Saint-Germain-des-Prés district, there is no need to know the exact number of the house, which appears in all the tourist guides. It can be spotted from a distance by its tags and other graffiti, which already adorned the facade during the artist’s lifetime, to the great dismay of local residents.
“There you go, this is my place. I don’t know what it is: a sitting room, a music room, a brothel, a museum…” said the artist of this cocoon – the former stables of a private mansion – acquired at the end of 1967 .
Outside, it has long been a place of pilgrimage. A bit like Jim Morrison’s grave, at the Père-Lachaise cemetery.
We saw it recently during the death of Serge Gainsbourg’s ex-partner. Spontaneously, admirers of Jane Birkin and the leading couple of the 70s flocked to the house to lay flowers or write a word on this veritable “wall of admiration”, which is regularly repainted.
Apart from the immediate family, only a privileged few have been able to access the interior of this quasi-mausoleum since the death there, in 1991, of “the man with the head of cabbage”. “Jean-Paul Belmondo was seen as a neighbor. Karl Lagerfeld too. (…) These were not secret visits, but discreet,” confided in 2021 to Figaro a friend of the artist, Jean-Pierre Frioul, who watched over the place from 1984 to 2013.
Ali Baba’s Cave
There were several break-in attempts, the house even almost burned down one day, but nothing, according to him, has changed since his death. Not even the Zippo or the chain-smoked Gitane butts, which still sit in the ashtrays.
“Every day, we had to ventilate, dust and put everything back in its place. In the fridge, I changed the canned goods when they threatened to explode,” says the former guardian of the sanctuary.
Rather cramped, the house sheltered the love affairs of Serge Gainbourg with Jane Birkin then with Bambou. Charlotte, her big sister Kate, born from a first union of the British, and Lulu, the singer’s youngest son, lived there as a child. It was also the ideal place for creation for the artist, who wrote and composed his greatest songs there.
The den is very dark, as wanted by Gainsbourg, who was brooding when he moved in just after being left by Brigitte Bardot. BB with whom he had made the first visit to the house…
In the main room, which served as his office and music room, the floor was tiled in black and white, the walls hung with black fabric and the windows and doors were lacquered in white.
Ali Baba’s cave, souvenir trunk, painting gallery, auditorium… Everything, but not a mess. The disorder was studied to the millimeter by the artist, an unrepentant maniac.
His visitors Françoise Hardy and Jacques Dutronc still remember it: it was better not to move anything if we wanted to avoid a diplomatic incident with the owner.