Passy
Encyclopedia
Passy is an area of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, located in the XVIe arrondissement
XVIe arrondissement
The 16th arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of Paris, the capital city of France...

, on the Right Bank. It is traditionally home to many of the city's wealthiest residents.

Passy was formerly a commune. It was annexed to Paris in 1860.

People with ties to Passy

  • Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupelinière
    Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupelinière
    Alexandre Jean Joseph Le Riche de La Pouplinière was an immensely wealthy fermier général who was one of the greatest patrons of music and musicians of the eighteenth century. A true patron of the Enlightenment he gathered round him a circle of artists, men of letters and musicians...

     18th century
  • Félix Antoine Appert (1817-1891)
  • Honoré de Balzac
    Honoré de Balzac
    Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....

  • Pierre Bretonneau
    Pierre Bretonneau
    - Biography :Born at Saint-Georges-sur-Cher, in the Loir-et-Cher département. His father was a surgeon. He studied with his uncle, the vicar at Chenonceaux department along with the children of the Chenonceau château...

  • Benjamin Franklin
    Benjamin Franklin
    Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

  • General Charles Edward Jennings de Kilmaine
  • Paul de Kock
  • Alphonse de Lamartine
    Alphonse de Lamartine
    Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.-Career:...

  • Virginia Oldoini, Countess di Castiglione, early important photographic artist, Courtesan
    Courtesan
    A courtesan was originally a female courtier, which means a person who attends the court of a monarch or other powerful person.In feudal society, the court was the centre of government as well as the residence of the monarch, and social and political life were often completely mixed together...

    , supposed secret agent, mistress to Napoleon III, lived in a house he bought for her in 1857 and lived on in the area until the mid 1870s.
  • Pierre-Louis Pierson, photographic artist
  • Comtesse de Buyer-Mimeure, the former Miss Daisy Polk
    Daisy Polk
    Daisy Polk was an American woman who became Comtesse de Buyer-Mimeure after marrying French Army General Marie Joseph Louis Robert de Buyer.Polk was a prominent woman from San Francisco...

  • Gioacchino Rossini
    Gioacchino Rossini
    Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces...

  • William Kissam Vanderbilt
    William Kissam Vanderbilt
    William Kissam Vanderbilt was a member of the prominent American Vanderbilt family. He managed railroads and was a horse breeder.-Biography:...

    , kept a home in Passy
  • Louis-Guillaume Le Veillard, the first mayor of Passy
  • Giuseppe Verdi
    Giuseppe Verdi
    Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

     and Giuseppina Strepponi
    Giuseppina Strepponi
    Clelia Maria Josepha Strepponi was a nineteenth century Italian operatic soprano of great renown and the second wife of composer Giuseppe Verdi...

     spent two summers (1848 and 1849) in Passy

Benjamin Franklin in Passy

Passy is known to Americans as the home of patriot Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

 during the nine years that he lived in France during the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

. For much of this time, he was a lodger in the home of Monsieur de Chaumont.

Franklin established a small printing press
Printing press
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...

 in his lodgings, to print pamphlets and other material as part of his mandate to maintain French support of the revolution. He called it the Passy Press. Among his printing projects, he produced passports, even developing a special typeface known as "le Franklin." He also printed a 1782 treatise from Pierre-André Gargaz titled "A Project of Universal and Perpetual Peace," that laid out a vision for maintaining a permanent peace in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. It proposed a central governing council, with representatives of all of the nations of Europe, that would arbitrate international disputes.

He also worked on his scientific projects at a laboratory shared with others installed by Louis XV in the Château de la Muette
Château de la Muette
The Château de la Muette is a château located on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, France, near the Porte de la Muette.Three châteaux have been located on the site since a hunting lodge was transformed into the first château for Princess Marguerite de Valois, favorite daughter of King...

.

When Franklin returned to America, the new ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

, wrote, "When he left Passy, it seemed as if the village had lost its patriarch." At the time of Franklin, Passy was a village separate from Paris.

Places in Passy

There is now a rue Benjamin Franklin and a square de Yorktown near the Trocadéro
Trocadéro
The Trocadéro, , site of the Palais de Chaillot, , is an area of Paris, France, in the 16th arrondissement, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. The hill of the Trocadéro is the hill of Chaillot, a former village.- Origin of the name :...

.

A lively street in the area is Rue de Passy, which goes from La Muette to the Place de Costa Rica just behind the Trocadéro. It has boutiques and chain stores along its length.

The Cimetière de Passy, located at 2, rue du Commandant Schœlsing, is the burial place for many well-known persons including American silent film star Pearl White
Pearl White
Pearl Fay White was an American film actress, the so-called "Stunt Queen" of silent films, most notably in The Perils of Pauline.-Early life:...

, the painters Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....

 and Berthe Morisot
Berthe Morisot
Berthe Morisot was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.In 1864, she exhibited for the first...

, and composer Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

.

Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....

 lived and wrote in Passy, and his house is now a museum (Maison de Balzac
Maison de Balzac
The Maison de Balzac is a house museum in the former residence of French novelist Honoré de Balzac . It is located in the 16th arrondissement at 47, rue Raynouard, Paris, France, and open daily except Mondays and holidays; admission to the house is free, but a fee is charged for its temporary...

).

The apartment in which Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...

 trysts with Maria Schneider
Maria Schneider (actress)
Maria Schneider was a French actress. She was best known for playing Jeanne, opposite Marlon Brando, in the 1972 film Last Tango in Paris.-Career:...

 in Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci is an Italian film director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers...

's 1972 film Last Tango in Paris
Last Tango in Paris
Last Tango in Paris is a 1972 Italian romantic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci which portrays a recent American widower who takes up an anonymous sexual relationship with a young, soon-to-be-married Parisian woman...

was located in Passy.

See also

  • Auteuil-Neuilly-Passy
    Auteuil-Neuilly-Passy
    Auteuil and Passy are part of the 16th arrondissement of Paris. They are located near the Bois de Boulogne and the suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine too....

  • Théodore Année
    Théodore Année
    Théodore Année, a wealthy, retired French diplomatic consul in South America, returned to France in the mid 1840's and settled in rue des Réservoirs, Passy, Paris, where he devoted himself to the culture of tropical plants from South America, having brought back with him the taste for plants with...

  • Madame Brillon
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