Passy is an area of Paris, France, located in the XVIe arrondissement, on the Right Bank. It is traditionally home to many of the city's wealthiest residents.
Passy was formerly a commune. It was annexed to Paris in 1860.
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Passy is known to Americans as the home of patriot Benjamin Franklin during the nine years that he lived in France during the American Revolutionary War. For much of this time, he was a lodger in the home of Monsieur de Chaumont.
Franklin established a small printing press in his lodgings, to print pamphlets and other material as part of his mandate to maintain French support of the revolution. He called it the Passy Press. Among his printing projects, he produced passports, even developing a special typeface known as "le Franklin." He also printed a 1782 treatise from Pierre-André Gargaz titled "A Project of Universal and Perpetual Peace," that laid out a vision for maintaining a permanent peace in Europe. It proposed a central governing council, with representatives of all of the nations of Europe, that would arbitrate international disputes.
He also worked on his scientific projects at a laboratory shared with others installed by Louis XV in the Château de la Muette.
When Franklin returned to America, the new ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, wrote, "When he left Passy, it seemed as if the village had lost its patriarch." At the time of Franklin, Passy was a village separate from Paris.
There is now a rue Benjamin Franklin and a square de Yorktown near the Trocadéro.
A lively street in the area is Rue de Passy, which goes from La Muette to the Place de Costa Rica just behind the Trocadéro. It has boutiques and chain stores along its length.
The Cimetière de Passy, located at 2, rue du Commandant Schœlsing, is the burial place for many well-known persons including American silent film star Pearl White, the painters Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, and composer Claude Debussy.
Honoré de Balzac lived and wrote in Passy, and his house is now a museum (Maison de Balzac).
The apartment in which Marlon Brando trysts with Maria Schneider in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1972 film Last Tango in Paris was located in Passy.