Today, Nicolas Flamel may be best known as the supposedly immortal philosopher who plays a key role in the Harry Potter franchise. In real life, his house at 51 rue de Montmorency – la maison de Nicolas Flamel – has gained an immortality of its own as the oldest still-standing house in Paris.
The façade of the building is made up of several doors and windows interspersed with beautifully carved columns. In 1407, when the house was first constructed, one would have been able to see a carving of Nicolas Flamel himself standing next to Jesus Christ. Today, this image has faded away. One can still see ornate images of saints and angels as well as the initials “N.F.”
As for why Nicolas Flamel built the house, the large Middle French inscription running the length of the building’s face provides an answer: We working men and women who live on the porch of this house constructed in the year of our lord 1407 are required by law to say each day one Our Father and one Hail Mary in prayer to our God whose grace pardons our trespasses. Deeply religious and with a bevy of wealth, Nicolas Flamel and his wife Pernelle constructed homes free for use by the city’s poor, with the only requirement being that these people pray to God each day.
The house has lived many lives in the centuries after. At the start of the 20th century, a restoration project was given blessing to repair the building and bring the surviving carvings on the outside walls back to life. The home was named a historical site in 1911. During World War 2, it briefly served as a brothel. In the 80s, it spent time as a disco. Today, one can visit the house of Nicolas Flamel for a delicious meal from the restaurant which operates out of its ground floor.
Beginning in the 17th century, rumors caused by faked manuscripts about Nicolas Flamel would give him a reputation as an alchemist who created the immortality-giving Elixir of Life and was able to create the philosopher’s stone which turns lead to gold. This is certainly the impression the great novelist Victor Hugo had of Flamel, as Hugo became convinced Flamel had visited him in a séance and described what life on Mercury looked like – he also incorporated the alchemist as a worldly detail in his monumental Notre Dame de Paris. This Flamel is unknowable and greedy, always lusting for more gold and more life, yet in the house of Nicolas Flamel, one sees a man of deep selflessness who found a better sort of immortality by reaching out and helping the poor of his city.
References
« La plus vieille maison de Paris » Paris ZigZag : n. pag. Web. 2 Mars 2020. https://www.pariszigzag.fr/secret/histoire–insolite–paris/la–plus–vieille–maison–de–paris
« Histoire de la plus vieille maison de Paris. » Vivre Paris 21 Février 2019 : n. pag. Web. 2 Mars 2020. https://vivreparis.fr/histoire-de-la-plus-vieille-maison-de-paris/
“Victor Huge and Nicolas Flamel.” Victor Hugo Central. n. pag. Web. 11 March 2020. http://www.gavroche.org/vhugo/flamel.shtml
Image Attribution
Guilhem Vellut from Paris, France / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). 11 March 2020. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Auberge_Nicolas_Flamel,_Paris_11_February_2017.jpg
Interesting. Thank you.