Nicolas Flamel’s house

The house of the scribe the legends made an immortal alchemist

At 51 rue de Montmorency stands probably the oldest house in Paris, built in 1407 by Nicolas Flamel after the death of his wife Pernelle as a shelter for the poor, with a frieze still asking those who live under its porch to say an Our Father and an Ave Maria every day for sinners. Flamel was real and well documented: a public scribe who drew up letters and contracts, ran two shops, married a woman who had been widowed twice, gave to churches, designed his own tombstone in 1410 and died in 1418. Two centuries later he became something else. Texts published under his name in the 17th century told how he learned the secrets of alchemy from a converted Jew on the road to Santiago de Compostela, made the philosopher’s stone and escaped death, and that Flamel has walked through fiction ever since. There is no sign the real man practised alchemy, and his will shows a generous man without the fabulous wealth of the legend. His tombstone is in the Musée de Cluny, and the ground floor of the house is a restaurant.