Twentieth-century Paris was renowned for its literary and cultural figures, and now visitors and residents alike can see the city through their eyes with a new iPhone application called TravelbyArt.
The app has 20 tours that unearth the lives of notable names such as Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the one- to three-hour tours include information about where they lived, the studios where they worked and the restaurants and bars where they ate and socialized. There is also a timeline feature for every figure that shows the chronological course of his or her life in Paris.
Easy to follow offline maps that don’t require an Internet connection and transportation tips are included, but the maps also are linked to the phone’s internal GPS so users can see exactly where they are.
The Hemingway tour, for example, starts at Hôtel d’Angleterre in St. Germain de Prés, where the author stayed the first time he came to Paris with his wife in 1921.
Stops along the way include Café Pré aux Clercs where he often ate, the Shakespeare & Company bookstore in St.-Michel-Notre Dame where he met with other writers such as Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein’s home in the Sixth Arrondissement, which he visited frequently throughout their close friendship.
Beata Misiewicz, the founder of TravelbyArt, said that the app is meant to take users back in time. “Many of these artists started their careers in Paris, and we want to show people how they began and the path to how they eventually flourished,” she said in a phone interview.
The Hemingway excursion is free while others are $2.99 each.