Arrondissements 7, 15
Numbers: 2
Named in 1884 after Admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de La Motte the road was first opened as the Avenue de l’Ecole Militaire in 1680.
The Chilean embassy was in a prime location at No. 2. It had previously been the private mansion of the Tour-d’Auvergne family.
This is where Louis Aragon was allowed to take refuge for a few days on August 28 1939 by fellow poet and Communist, but also a diplomat there at the time, Pablo Neruda. Aragon had been attacked in the street by the extreme right-wing after the French Communist Party had been banned on August 25, two days after the Hitler-Stalin ‘Non-aggression Pact’.
In 1971 Neruda was named Ambassador to France, and he lived at No. 2 until the fascist coup in Chile in 1973.
Jean Jaurès lived at No. 19 in the 1890s.