Maison Gainsbourg — Paris

5 Rue de Verneuil in Saint-Germain-des-Prés was the home of Serge Gainsbourg — the singer, songwriter, composer, filmmaker, and provocateur who is arguably the most significant figure in French popular music of the twentieth century — from 1969 until his death on 2 March 1991. Gainsbourg lived in the narrow townhouse with his partner and muse Jane Birkin, and later alone, filling it with art, taxidermy, record collections, and an atmosphere of controlled dissolution. After his death, the exterior wall of the house became one of the most densely covered graffiti surfaces in Paris — fans covering every available centimetre with messages, drawings, and declarations of love and admiration that have been maintained continuously for over three decades.

Gainsbourg's career encompassed jazz, chanson, pop, reggae, electronic music, and film scoring, unified by a sensibility that combined genuine poetic intelligence with deliberate transgression. His works include 'Je t'aime... moi non plus' (recorded with Birkin, banned by the BBC and the Vatican for its sexual content, and a major European hit in 1969), the Histoire de Melody Nelson concept album (1971), and the reggae album Aux armes et cætera (1979), which set the French national anthem to a reggae rhythm. His relationship with Birkin was one of the great creative partnerships of French cultural life.

Maison Gainsbourg opened as a museum in 2023, giving the public access to the interior of the house for the first time. The museum preserves the rooms as they were during Gainsbourg's lifetime and presents his life and work through the objects he collected and the spaces he inhabited. The exterior wall of fan graffiti continues to be maintained as part of the memorial. The Rue de Verneuil is in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, one of Paris's most culturally significant neighbourhoods.