Getting there:
Transportation will be provided. Departure will be at 12:45pm from the 15th arrondissement. An email with the exact location will be sent to registrants later.
Registration is limited to five.
Members should bring their own snacks and drinks for the visit.
Maison Jean Cocteau, 2:00pm - 3:30pm
We will begin with a tour of the house where Jean Cocteau, avant-guard artist, poet, writer and film director, lived and worked during the last 17 years of his life. We will admire his refuge, away from the hustle-and-bustle of Paris, actually the annex of a castle surrounded by a moat. We will tour his office, his living room and his bedroom, restored to the way it was at his death in 1963.
We will also see the temporary exhibition showcasing Cocteau’s cinematic and literary productions of “Myths and Legends." Through Cocteau’s experimental filmmaker lens, we will go with Orpheus on his fearsome journey to the underworld and enter into other Surrealist worlds.
Outdoors, we will walk in Cocteau’s enchanting gardens, with movie props from his poetic and dreamlike production of Beauty and the Beast.
A Chapel of Love, 3:30pm - 4:30pm
We will then visit the nearby Saint-Blaise des Simples Chapel, built by the Knight Templars in 1136 whose reconstructed walls were painted by Jean Cocteau. It is in this chapel where Jean Cocteau was laid to rest. We will listen to a moving recording made by his lover, the actor Jean Marais. In the gardens surrounding the chapel, we will discover different medicinal plants, called Les Simples. We will also have the opportunity to visit the old market place near the chapel.
Photo: © Moïse Fournier
Visit coordinator
Wendy Dubreuil is a true Francophile, married to a French man. She holds a BA in French and a MA in International Communication from the School of International Service, American University, Washington DC and has extensive international experience, including work with the U.N.