Avenue Reille

Arrondissement 14

Numbers 7, 25, 53

Running southwards up to the Montsouris Park the avenue was opened in 1865 under the Second Empire. Because it was close to the Thiers wall around Paris, it was named after Marshal Charles Reille who had died five years earlier. He had been promoted to General by Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he supported during the 100 days of 1815, leading the Second Army corps at Waterloo.

The leafy Avenue Reille in 1900, fifteen years after Rosa Luxemburg moved in.

For 18 months from 18 March 1895 Rosa Luxemburg shared a third-floor flat at No. 7 with Cezaryna Wanda Wojnarowska, a Polish revolutionary who had already lived in Paris for several years and who lived in France for the rest of her life, joining the SFIO in the 1900s.

Rosa Luxemburg shared a flat at No. 7 in 1895-96 while working on her doctorat and producing the ‘Workers’ Cause’ Polish social democratic newspaper.

In September 1910 Inessa Armand stayed for a couple of months at No 25 with her former husband, who then moved back to Moscow with their three children.

No. 53, the Villa Reille, was the first building in Paris, a house cum artist’s studio, designed by Le Corbusier working with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, in 1923.

Georges Braque also lived in the Avenue in the 1920s.