The haunted house

Serge Gainsbourg died 33 years ago: now the icon's former home is a place of pilgrimage. Mademoiselle Lili waited a long time for the home visit.

A long time ago I was able to experience in a very special way the importance that the cult singer, provocateur and non-conformist still has in French society. I lived for the first time as an exchange student in France, in sleepy Poitiers, and wanted to celebrate my birthday on March 3rd in a concert bar. Instead I ended up at the funeral mass. On the small stage stood a black coffin with white roses and Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin moaned “Je t’aime – moi non plus” from the speakers. Since his death on March 2, 1991, the barman told me, they have held a Serge memorial evening here every year.

The now graffiti-sprayed house of the former scandalous couple on Rue de Verneuil in Paris fell into a Sleeping Beauty sleep that day - and their daughter and actress Charlotte Gainsbourg watched like a hawk to ensure that everything remained as her father left it on the day of his death had: The box of Gitanes is still next to the piano, even the butts in the ashtray are still there - you can almost smell the chain smoker Gainsbourg. The canned vegetables are still in the kitchen, as long as they haven't burst. Quirky works of art, furniture, collectibles, vinyl records, sheet music, as far as the eye can see. Nude photos of his short-term lover Brigitte Bardot, with whom he viewed the house in 1968 and ultimately bought it before Jane moved in. A dark, fantastic and intimate bohemian interior in which the genius loci, indeed the spirit of an entire era, is still alive.

Shortly before her death, Charlotte memorialized her mother Jane Birkin, who died last summer, with the documentary “Jane par Charlotte,” and now posthumously memorialized her father with a museum and this house, the place of her childhood. Now the 130-square-meter hideaway is one of Paris' most sought-after haunted houses. The waiting lists are endless and quickly booked up. The first 15,000 tickets are said to have sold out online in just one hour. Only six visitors per tour, only two at a time, are allowed to enter every ten minutes. Photos and videos are strictly prohibited in order to preserve the magic of the place, the feeling of an intimate encounter.

Each visitor receives a headset on which Charlotte guides through the black-wallpapered rooms on two floors in a whispering voice in English and French. “I always wanted to come here rather than go to the cemetery,” she says. “When my father died, I had something of a refusal to mourn. Everyone claimed it as their own: there was this door that could be closed, where I could gather, and I quickly thought of turning it into a museum.

She took time to let her idea mature over 30 years. Maybe it took just that long to make time travel so exciting and touching today.