VILLA HUYSMANS

At the end of the street bearing his name, the house of Joris-Karl Huysmans or Villa Notre-Dame, keeps its mystery. In the middle of its park with century-old trees, it is now a private property. The novelist Huysmans (1848-1907) had fled Paris after converting to Catholicism and publishing his sulphurous book Là-bas. He had the building built and settled there from 1899 to 1901, he had come to seek peace near the monastery of Ligugé. He wanted to become an oblate (a person linked to the monastery without having taken a vow) and wrote the eponymous book.