Arrondissement 9
Numbers: 2, 80
Named after the three generations of the Taitbout family who successively became Clerks to the Paris Town Office from 1698 to 1775, the road was opened in 1773.
Louis Blanc lived 1842 to 1848 above the Tortini café at No. 2 that was founded by a Venetian migrant initially called Velloni as a cafe and ice-cream parlour in 1804 (sketched above in 1888). It was there that Blanc and his supporters, Louis Greppo, Théophile Thoré and Hippolyte Detours, met on May 14 1848 and decided not to participate in the following day’s protest demonstration against the new government’s refusal to support the Polish revolutionaries.
Many writers, musicians and artists lived at a creative colony of separate houses at No. 80 that was known first as the Cité des Trois-Frères and then as the Square d’Orléans. Rebuilt in classical style and finished in 1841, from 1842 to 1849 Frédéric Chopin lived in No. 9, while George Sand lived on the first floor of No. 5 from 1842 to 1847. The lovers were both visited by many of the period’s celebrities, including Leroux, Honoré de Balzac, Heinrich Heine, Eugène Delacroix, François Arago and the actress Marie Dorval.
