When James Baldwin arrived in Paris on November 11, 1948, he was 24 years old and had just $40 in his pocket. He had left the United States amid the racism and homophobia that had shaped much of his early life, hoping to find enough distance to write and understand the country he had left behind. France would remain central to his life for decades, but his final home was not in Paris. In 1971, after years of living between countries and spending time in Turkey, Baldwin settled in the small Provençal village of Saint-Paul de Vence in southern France. He moved into a house belonging to Jeanne Faure, initially renting rooms before gradually buying the property piece by piece with proceeds from his publications. The house, later known as “Chez Baldwin”, became his permanent home, workplace and gathering place during the final 16 years of his life. The purchase, however, was not legally complete when Baldwin died, leaving the property at the centre of a later dispute over its ownership.
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