Walk to Madness in Paris

There is no shortage of guidebooks on walks in Paris in bookshops, with each of these offering a particular angle through which to discover the capital: love, food, gardens, and so on.

However, this book takes on an unusual stroll through a universe of events, people and places that marked the history of madness. The authors roam the streets of Paris in search of the past, whether recent or much more distant. Their peregrinations led them from the Conciergerie (a former prison in Paris) to Sainte-Anne Hospital and Saint-Germain-des-Prés at Bastille, as well as to many other places. Pounding the pavements, they cross the paths of Landru, Sade and Baudelaire, and of Valentin Magnana or Balzac, retracing the capital’s mad history.