Walk in the footsteps of the poet
A visitor trail allows you to discover the city of Charleville-Mézières by walking in the footsteps of the man with ‘soles of wind’. Over the last few years, this trail has been decorated with works of art giving visitors a new perspective on the hometown of one of France’s greatest poets.
The historical trail allows you to discover the places frequented by Arthur Rimbaud during his childhood and adolescence. In addition to the Musée Arthur Rimbaud the Maison des Ailleurs, where the poet resided as a teenager, we also discover on this pedestrian trail the house where he was born, the school he attended, the old Rossat Institute, and even the square and station that inspired the poem ‘A la musique’. This trail ends with the cemetery of Charleville where he was buried in 1891.
This trail is often enhanced with the addition or creation of contemporary art. In 2011, the chair-poems of Michel Goulet decorated the Quai Rimbaud, between the museum and the ‘Maison des Ailleurs’. In 2017, it was the ‘Rimbaud’ sculpture in the form of a heart by Michel Gillet that was installed in the station square beside the present bust of him that has been there since 1901.
