The Last Baldwin House (Classic)
6/19/202615 min
James Baldwin’s former home in the South of France is a site that many visit hoping to feel the essence of the great African-American writer. But should it be?
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First 90 secondsBaudelaire· Host0:01
[gentle music] Every day as I sit at my desk in my office and write episodes for this show, I look at a photo on my wall. It's of James Baldwin. He's one of my idols, and through his books and his speeches, he's shaped my worldview as much as anyone. So a few years ago when I was in France, there was one place I really wanted to visit, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, a small town off of France's southern coast, only about an hour drive from the Italian border. From 1971 to 1987, James Baldwin called this small French town home. I wanted to visit his house. I'd read that it was a sprawling stone house with green shutters and had lush gardens and views of the Mediterranean. I also had read that writers, in particular Black writers, often made it a sort of pilgrimage to visit the place, but I never got there. And maybe that's a good thing, because from what I've heard, the experience can be underwhelming, mainly because the actual house isn't even there anymore.
Tara Phillips· Guest0:58
You know, he was, he was in and out of these places. I mean, that, that's the whole thing is like, where is James Baldwin's home really? What is his home?
Baudelaire· Host1:07
[upbeat music] My name is Baudelaire, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today, we go to Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France to see what was once the home of James Baldwin, and I talk to a