Villa Santos-Dumont

You are currently standing in front of the Villa Santos-Dumont, a quiet, cobblestoned dead-end street that feels worlds away from the busy streets of the fifteenth arrondissement. While the name honors Alberto Santos-Dumont, the famous aviation pioneer who spent much of his life in Paris, this specific location was never his personal home. Instead, it was developed as a residential enclave in the nineteen-twenties by the sculptor Raphaël Paynot, who purchased the land when it was still a rural expanse of wheat fields and vineyards.