Les Mots à La Bouche

Les Mots à la Bouche is the oldest LGBTQ bookshop in France and a genuine Parisian institution, founded in 1980 and, for readers seeking the best of queer literature, a place of near-pilgrimage. After 37 years as a beloved fixture of the Marais gayborhood, rising rents from the district's gentrification forced it out in 2020, and it has since found a warm new home a little further east in the 11th, near Saint-Ambroise. Its shelves are a treasure of LGBTQ+ writing in French and English, novels, essays, philosophy and biography, from Colette and Proust to Hervé Guibert and Judith Butler, alongside queer magazines from around the world and, downstairs in a beautiful vaulted stone cellar, a superb selection of fine-art and male-photography books and DVDs. Warm, committed, and expertly curated (with the team's charming handwritten recommendations dotted through the store), and hosting exhibitions and author signings, it's an essential stop for anyone exploring literary and cultural gay Paris. Open every day, even Sundays.