Café Momus = Le Relais du Louvre

The 3-star “coaching inn,” Le Relais Du Louvre, opened in 1991 and was renovated in 2000.
Between 1800 and 1941, this building contained the printing presses that produced Revolutionary pamphlets and the later goings-on of the House of Representatives. Its street level and first floor held the Café Momus, favored by Voltaire, Hugo, and intellectuals of the day, including Henri Murger, author of Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, on which Puccini’s La Bohème is based. It is Café Momus that is the setting for act two of the opera.
The address is a bit confusing, because in the writings of Murger, he placed the Momus at No. 15. Well, it turns out that when the shops abutting the church St-Germain-l’Auxerrois were removed and the street reworked, the numbers were changed as well. The old No. 15 is now No. 19, where today’s guests enjoy lodgings on a quiet street opposite the church, a half block from the eastern façade of the Louvre, and a half block from the Seine. Perfect.

Le Relais du Louvre
19, rue des Prêtres-St-Germain-l’Auxerrois
http://www.relaisdulouvre.com

La Bohème: from magazine to opera house

Henri Murger was a member of a literary circle called “the water drinkers,” because there was never enough money for wine. Their chief hangout was the upper floor of the Café Momus, opposite the Louvre and the church Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois (see separate post). Instead of inventing a nom-de-plume, as many writers did, he altered his given name of Henri Murger to Henry Mürger, choosing the English spelling of his first name and adding a meaningless umlaut to his last name. Weird.
Anyway, Murger received just a few francs per installment for a story that was serialized in the 1840s in the magazine Corsaire, under the title The Bohemians. This series of stories was later published as the novel Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, which became the basis for two operas (Puccini and Leoncavallo), a zarzuela, an operetta (Kálmán’s The Violet of Montmartre) and the Broadway musical Rent.
Much of the material was autobiographical, and many of the names and places were real. The Café Momus, the setting for the second act of Puccini’s opera, was located at No. 15 Rue des Prêtres Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. The building still stands, but is no longer a café.






















In this sketch, the Café Momus is on the right, and the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois is on the left. The building in the center with the turret was demolished in the late 19th century to make space for the department store La Samaritaine (closed since 2005).
Métro: Pont Neuf or Louvre-Rivoli