impasse rue Neuve

About this audio guide

This guide to the impasse rue Neuve in Bordeaux opens in April 1715, when Jeanne de Lartigue signed a marriage contract in the house behind the archway and became the wife of the young magistrate later known as Montesquieu. It follows her unflattering reputation among contemporaries, her family's sixteenth-century mansion, the Oustau de Carle, and the two carved figures still watching over the passage from its stone wall. You'll hear how she spent the following decades tied to this house even as her husband's writing made him famous across Europe, until her death in the same impasse in 1770. Further along the passage stands another, even older building worth pausing in front of before you move on.