Welcome to Le Manège Bréa (meaning The carousel Bréa) like my grand mother used to call the building dated 1870. With its ancient furniture and paintings, sculptures and numerous art books, this duplex on the 5th and 6th floor with lift combines the charm of a typical countryside French little house and the modernity of an artist’s studio, all in the heart of Montparnasse. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a fully equipped kitchen opened to a dining and a big living room. Stylish, artistic and Parisian. It was built in 1870 by my great great grant aunt Victorine, you can see her portrait in the garbage room ( no pun intended there ! ) She inherited a lot of money from her prematurely deceased husband and this smart woman, a visionary entrepreneur, decided to invest the money in stone. At that time, the 6th district of Paris didn’t exist yet, the area was still outside of the city. But Baron Haussmann made some colossal work between 1853 and 1870 redesigning the face of Paris, incorporating new districts like Montparnasse to the map of the city. It is in this brand new district that Aunt Victorine decided to build a hotel and got it to be managed by a sleazy couple that turned it into a brothel for a few decades. A hundred years later, my grandmother took things back in her own hands, and in the 1970’s it became the family building that I have grown up into. Every member of my family have lived on one floor or the other at some point in their lives. This is why my grandma called it « Le Manège Bréa ». Nowadays, I’m the only one of my family still living here but the memory of every generation is still impregnated in the building. Most of the furniture have a story to tell. Like the imperfect wooden floor made by my father as a broke 25 year old student. He cut trees in a forest nearby Paris and made the floor with the help of some friends. The blue closet in the bedroom was passed by, from mother to daughter, for every generation since my great grandmother. The stones used as nightstands were stolen by my father, from a wall of the Beaux Arts de Paris school, during a very drunken night, while he was a student in architecture there. So now on to the specifics: The flat is on 2 floors, it is 100 square meters (1076 Sq ft), the lift serves the 2 floors if you need that convenience (if you do, I’ll ask you to always lock the door to the lift access on the 6th floor when you go or are inside, otherwise people from downstairs can get inside from the 6th floor lift access.) Out of the 3 bedrooms, the master bedroom is en-suite, with a full bathroom and toilet. Another shower room serves the 2 other bedrooms with the second toilet downstairs. There are 2 queen size beds (160cm) and one single bed. Appliances are all pretty intuitive.