Rue de Bièvre: The Tiny Paris Street With a Past, Present & Future
We’ve been following Messy Nessy’s blog and book series, Don’t be a Tourist, for a while now. She has a way of digging up overlooked, quirky, nostalgic things. So when she opened a physical shop in 2024, Messy Nessy’s Cabinet, we knew we had to pay it a visit.
As we walked into the store we were greeted by an associate. Then we asked if Vanessa was in. To our surprise, the associate disappeared into the back room and Vanessa came out. That turned into a conversation about the shop, the area, and how she ended up as an American in Paris.
The best way to describe her place is part antique shop, part bookstore, part gallery, and part quirky. And that probably doesn’t do it justice. Take for instance, water from the Seine sold in small vintage apothecary bottles. Or, the vintage match strikers. And then there’s the watercolor kit.
We ended up chatting with Vanessa for about ten minutes, and somewhere in that conversation, she started telling us about the street itself. Rue de Bièvre is barely 200 meters or one block long, and, as it turns out, one of the more interesting streets in Paris. What started as a walk down a street to get somewhere turned into a walk down a street that’s full of history: a buried river, a poet, a former president, and, a few doors up from her shop is a restaurant where you can write a letter to your future self.
Location:
Messy Nessy’s Cabinet is located in the Latin Quarter of Paris, just steps from the Seine and only a short walk to Notre Dame.
19 Rue de Bièvre, 75005 Paris
Monday – Friday: 11 AM – 6PM
Saturday: 11AM – 6 PM
Sunday: Closed
Phone: +33 9 56 13 48 11
The river you can’t see
One of the things we love most about Paris is the way so much of old Paris gets absorbed into the new Paris, rather than just erased. Bièvre, for example, was once an actual small river. It was a tributary that fed into the Seine near what’s now the Gare d’Austerlitz. Sometime in the medieval period, a canal was cut off from it to feed the nearby Augustinian Monastery, Abbaye Saint-Victor. The waterway ran roughly along the path of what’s now this street. By the early 20th century, the river had been covered over, paved, and somehow incorporated into the city’s underground plumbing. When you walk along rue de Bièvre today, there’s no sign a river was ever there. At least until you look to the end of the street and see the Seine.
A poet, a president, and no cars allowed
For a street this short, rue de Bièvre has had some pretty famous residents. The poet Dante once lived here during his time in Paris. Centuries later, the writer Restif de la Bretonne, nicknamed “the Casanova of the slums” for his scandalous and controversial writing, also had an apartment at No. 44 in the late 1770s.
But the resident who really put the street on the map is former French President ,François Mitterrand, who lived at No. 22 from 1972 until 1995. His entire two-term presidency was run, for the most part, from this address. Due to security during those 14 years, rue de Bièvre was closed to car traffic entirely. Because we’re always interested in real estate, we discovered that his old apartment went up for sale in 2019 for close to €1.4 million, just in case you’re the kind of person who likes to know that sort of thing. There’s also now a small park just off the street, Square Danielle Mitterrand, named after the President’s wife.
Bistro des Lettres
At the beginning of rue de Bièvre is a small Parisian cafe, Bistro des Lettres. What makes it unique is the ritual that takes place at the end of a meal. Each guest is presented with an envelope, a piece of stationary, a fountain pen, and invited to write a personal letter, reflection, wish, or memory. The letter is kept safe and then sent back to you exactly one year later.
So long after you’ve returned home, you’ll get a little surprise in the mail and will be reminded of the moment you shared with someone in Paris.
Location: 52, Bd Saint Germain Paris 75005 (Corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue de Bièvre)
Hours: 7 days per week from 11:45 am to 10:30 pm
A street worth visiting
The only reason we came to rue de Bièvre was to visit Messy Nessy’s Cabinet. But we got a lot more. The shop lived up to our expectations but the history lesson about the street itself was also amazing. There’s still a river down there somewhere, even if you can’t see it. Then there’s the poet who once called it home. We can’t forget the president who shut it down to traffic for fourteen years just by living there (you have to appreciate a President who opted for his personal apartment over the Élysée Palace). A shopkeeper who took ten minutes out of her day to tell us all of it. And, a few doors up, a letter we’ll get to open in exactly one year.
It’s easy to walk past streets like this in Paris and not give it a second thought. There are so many, and they all look a little the same on the surface. It does make us wonder though how many more streets are there like rue de Bièvre that you can’t find out about in the guidebooks or online, but that have great stories and rich histories connected to them. Hundreds, we’re sure.
So if you find yourself near Notre Dame with twenty minutes to spare, walk the block. Stop in and visit Messy Nessy. And if you’re hungry, maybe even write yourself a letter.
One last stop on the street
As we left the shop and headed down the street toward the Seine, we discovered Cookies by Moon’s, a small artisanal cookie shop. Since there was an open table for two on the sidewalk out front, we decided that was a sign and we had to stop for a treat.
We ordered two cookies, served with spoons, and shared them. They were delicious, one-of-a-kind cookies you can’t find just anywhere.
Looking at the many reviews online, it seems like we weren’t the only ones who had just stumbled upon it by chance. That’s how most people find it. But it looks like we missed their signature dessert called the Flankie. It’s a vanilla flan baked on a cookie dough base. I guess that gives us one more reason to return to rue de Bièvre on our next trip to Paris.
