Brilliant AddressesBrilliant Addresses / France / Paris
Street · France

Avenue Montaigne

in Paris
Portrait

It was the Allée des Veuves, the widows' walk, until 1850, a semi-rural lane where women in mourning could sit without being spoken to. Christian Dior opened at number 30 in 1946 and the street reorganised itself around him within a decade, which is the shortest interval in which any of these addresses became what it is.

This is a street, not an entry in the atlas. It resolves upward to the city that holds it.