5 bis rue de Verneuil will open its doors on September 20. After several postponements, the Maison Gainsbourg, the last home of the artist in the heart of the 7th arrondissement of Paris, will finally welcome its first visitors in 2023, according to the announcement of his daughter Charlotte made on Sunday April 2, the date of the 95th anniversary of the birth of Serge Gainsbourg.
Place of pilgrimage for fans and the curious since its disappearance in 1991, 5 bis rue de Verneuil, filled with works of art, trinkets and musical instruments “has remained intact since its disappearance in 1991”, according to local officials. Number 14, on the sidewalk opposite, will house a museum “retracing the life and career of the artist” and will suggest “a bookstore-boutique and the Gainsbarre, café and piano bar”.
Opening postponed
The idea of opening Serge Gainsbourg’s home to visitors had been floated by Charlotte shortly after her father’s death, but the actual opening had been repeatedly postponed ever since. “In the first ten years, when I was the safest in the project, it was very complicated to bring it to fruition. And then I backtracked because that was kind of what I had left of him, so I kept him like a treasure.”said to AFP Charlotte Gainsbourg, in 2021, the year of the 30th anniversary of the disappearance of her father.
It was in 1968 that Serge Gainsbourg bought this “elegant mansion” as the press described it at the time, although it was “of modest proportions” explains his biographer, Marie-Dominique Lelièvre in the columns of JDD.
Décor
Inside, what at first glance looks like a “storage box of a neighborhood antique dealer” according to his words, turns out to respond to a precise arrangement. “It’s hardly a refuge, but a stage, a setting”, she writes.
“Here, this is my house. I don’t know what it is: a sitting room, a music room, a brothel, a museum…”, described Serge Gainsbourg himself in April 1979, in the television program “L’invité du Jeussard”. On two floors, a portrait of Brigitte Bardot rubs shoulders with a Steinway piano offered by her mother, erotic photo albums and a cast of the bust of Jane Birkin.
Up to 100,000 visitors per year
Redesigned identically in 2017 thanks to photos taken just after the artist’s death by the nephew of his butler, the place will also offer “a cultural program in situ, digital and outside the walls”.
The managers of the Maison Gainsbourg expect to welcome nearly 100,000 visitors a year. The reservation for the first visits, from September to December 2023, will open on the Internet from Tuesday, April 4.