Explore the real-world places that appear in Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Rue du Sommerard (Oliveira and la Maga's Neighborhood), Pont des Arts, Île de la Cité and Pont Neuf, Place du Panthéon and Rue Soufflot Area, Jardin du Luxembourg and 5 more.
5th arrondissement — Latin Quarter, heart of Oliveira's Paris
The Latin Quarter is the world of the first part of the novel, 'From the Other Side.' Horacio Oliveira, an Argentine intellectual adrift in Paris, wanders these streets with la Maga (Lucía), the Uruguayan woman he loves and torments with his intellectualizing. Their relationship plays out in cheap rooms, cafés and long aimless walks, shaping the novel's search for meaning outside rational structure.
Rue du Sommerard runs near the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Musée de Cluny in the Latin Quarter. The area has been a student and intellectual district since the Middle Ages, when the University of Paris was founded nearby. In the mid-20th century it attracted many Latin American exiles and artists.
The street is lined with cafés, bookshops, and small hotels, and remains busy with students and tourists. Cortázar's Paris is traced here by many readers following the novel's routes.
Seine — Where Oliveira and la Maga meet and drift
The bridges of the Seine are a constant presence in Oliveira's wanderings. He often meets la Maga near the Pont des Arts, and their encounters at the river's edge capture the novel's tension between chance and intention. The Seine, the quais, and the bridges become a kind of hopscotch grid across the city.
The Pont des Arts was the first iron bridge in Paris, built from 1802 to 1804 under Napoleon. It was rebuilt in the 1980s after damage from a barge collision and bombing in World War II. It connects the Institut de France with the Louvre.
The pedestrian bridge is a popular spot for photographs and picnics with views of the Île de la Cité. The padlocks left by couples were removed in 2015 and replaced with glass panels and then wooden ones.
Visit: Pont des Arts (landmark)
Seine — The oldest heart of Paris
Oliveira drifts through the Île de la Cité and across the Pont Neuf on his night walks. These riverside moments, with Oliveira reflecting on his failed attempts to reach 'the center,' echo the novel's metaphor of hopscotch, trying to reach Heaven from Earth. He also spends time with the Argentine friends of the Club along these quais.
The Pont Neuf, completed in 1607 under Henri IV, is the oldest standing bridge across the Seine in Paris. The Île de la Cité is where Paris was founded by the Parisii tribe and later the Romans.
The island contains Notre-Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, and the Conciergerie. The Pont Neuf is a major crossing for pedestrians and a favorite subject of photographers.
Visit: Pont Neuf (landmark)
5th arrondissement — Intellectual Paris
The area of the Panthéon and the Latin Quarter belongs to the intellectual wandering of Oliveira and the members of the Club, a circle of friends including Etienne, Perico Romero, Ronald, Babs, Gregorovius and Wong. They debate art, jazz, philosophy, and literature, circling questions of meaning much as the novel invites readers to do in its alternate orderings.
The Panthéon was built from 1758 to 1790 as a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve and became a mausoleum for great French figures after the Revolution. Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, and Marie Curie are interred there.
The Panthéon is a major monument open to visitors, with a crypt and a view over Paris from its dome. The surrounding streets remain a student quarter near the Sorbonne.
Visit: Panthéon (monument)
6th arrondissement — Park of wandering and conversation
The Luxembourg Gardens form part of the Parisian landscape where Oliveira and la Maga wander and talk. The park embodies the ordinary Parisian rhythms against which Oliveira's restless metaphysical searching plays out.
The garden was created in 1612 by Marie de' Medici around the Luxembourg Palace. It was redesigned in the 19th century under Napoleon III and Haussmann's renovations, and covers about 23 hectares.
The park is one of the most beloved public gardens in Paris, with fountains, chairs, a puppet theater, and tennis courts. The Luxembourg Palace houses the French Senate.
Visit: Jardin du Luxembourg (park)
14th arrondissement — Artistic Paris of exiles
Montparnasse stands for the world of Latin American and European artists whose Paris Cortázar knew. Oliveira's circle of exiles and bohemians reflects this world. Cortázar himself is buried in this cemetery, and readers leave hopscotch drawings and notes at his grave.
The cemetery opened in 1824 on the site of farmland. It holds the graves of Samuel Beckett, Charles Baudelaire (cenotaph), Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Julio Cortázar, who died in 1984.
Visitors can find Cortázar's tomb, often decorated with flowers, and the hopscotch-themed tributes left by fans. The cemetery is open daily to the public.
Visit: Cimetière du Montparnasse (landmark)
5th arrondissement — Booksellers along the Seine
The riverbanks with their green bookstalls figure in Oliveira's walks. He wanders among books, rain, and chance encounters, including the episode with the clochard Emmanuèle and Oliveira's drifting sense of belonging nowhere. The quais evoke the Paris of homeless wanderers he admires and fears becoming.
The bouquinistes of the Seine have sold used and antiquarian books from green boxes since the 16th century. Their stalls were formally regulated in the 19th century and the tradition is part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing of the Paris banks of the Seine.
About 200 bouquinistes still sell books, prints, and souvenirs along roughly three kilometers of the Seine's banks. Quai de Montebello offers views of Notre-Dame.
Visit: Bouquinistes de Paris (landmark)
Tip of Île de la Cité — Riverside retreat
The riverside tip of the island is the kind of liminal place where Oliveira and la Maga share quiet moments, with the river carrying time past. Such spots embody the novel's contrast between the lived flow of experience and Oliveira's analytical efforts to pin it down.
The park occupies the western tip of the Île de la Cité, named for Henri IV, nicknamed the 'Vert-Galant'. It was created in 1884 after the island was reshaped. Jacques de Molay, the last Templar master, was burned nearby in 1314.
The small triangular park is open to the public and is a popular spot for picnics and river views. Boat tours depart from the nearby landing.
Visit: Square du Vert-Galant (park)
37 Rue de la Bûcherie — Expatriate bookshop
Though not named as a main setting, this bookshop belongs to the expatriate literary Paris Oliveira's world inhabits. It captures the milieu of foreign writers and readers, the kind of community Oliveira and the Club move in as they read, discuss jazz and literature, and question Western rationality.
The present shop was founded in 1951 by American George Whitman as Le Mistral and renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964 in homage to Sylvia Beach's original shop. It became a gathering place for Beat writers and expatriates.
The bookshop is open to the public, selling new and used English-language books and hosting readings. A café sits next door.
Visit: Shakespeare and Company (landmark)
2nd arrondissement — Covered arcade
The Passage Choiseul belongs to Cortázar's Paris of covered arcades, which he explored in his own wanderings and drew on for the atmosphere of Oliveira's city. In the novel's Paris, such arcades suit the intimate, shabby, mysterious cityscape shared by Oliveira, la Maga, and the clochards.
Built in 1827, the Passage Choiseul is one of the longest covered passages in Paris. Writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline spent part of his childhood here, and Verlaine and Mallarmé frequented its establishments.
The glass-roofed passage houses small shops, theaters, and restaurants and is open to pedestrians during the day.
Visit: Passage Choiseul (landmark)
More by Julio Cortázar: All Julio Cortázar books
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