Five cities for the sensual, curious, and slightly unruly.
Anaïs Nin knew how to make a life feel like literature. Paris. Diaries. Psychoanalysis. Artists. Affairs. Obsession. Rooms full of conversation. A relentless curiosity about what happens beneath the respectable surface of things. So, this is not a historical Anaïs Nin itinerary. It’s an imagined one.
If Nin arrived today with a notebook, a good coat, several complicated relationships, and absolutely no intention of behaving sensibly, where might she go? I have ideas…
TANGIER, MOROCCO
For curiosity past the edge of the map.
Tangier feels inevitable. A port city facing the Strait of Gibraltar, layered with Moroccan history and generations of artists, writers, travelers, outsiders, and people who came looking for something they couldn't quite articulate.
I imagine Nin interested less in monuments than thresholds. Africa and Europe. Sea and city. Public life and private desire. The familiar and whatever waits one street beyond it. Perfectly Nin.
Where I’d put her:
El Minzah Hotel
Old-world, atmospheric, central. I want Nin somewhere with history seeping through its pores and enough elegance to make coming downstairs for a drink feel like an event.
What she'd do:
Get lost in the medina. Not performatively lost. Actually wander. She’d turn because a doorway is a shade of unknown blue, or she’d follow the smell of bread up a cracked stairwell. Maybe she’d buy something unnecessary or sit somewhere longer than intended.
Spend an afternoon at Café Hafa. She would bring a notebook. Obviously. And then there’s the Mediterranean. And mint tea. Maybe three pages about the sea. Probably six about the person sitting at the next table.
What she'd be writing about:
The difference between wanting to be seen and wanting to be discovered.
LISBON, PORTUGAL
For longing with excellent lighting.
Lisbon understands melancholy without cliché. Hills. Tiles. River light. Fado leaking into the evening. Streets that seem designed specifically for walking around while reconsidering your romantic decisions.
Nin would have loved a city where longing gets its own soundtrack.
Where I’d put her:
Memmo Alfama
Tucked into Alfama with views across the red roofs and Tagus, this is where I'd give her a terrace, Portuguese wine, and an afternoon with nowhere else to be.
The hotel even offers experiences built around the neighborhood, including Fado, walking, painting, ceramics, and tile work. She'd never make checkout.
What she'd do:
Listen to Fado somewhere small. Not while filming it. Just listen. Let somebody else's longing have the room for a while.
Go looking for azulejos. The National Tile Museum, certainly, but also doorways and façades and unexpected blue appearing halfway up a street.
Sit above the city at dusk. Wine. Bad decision pending. Maybe even a new notebook, because she obviously filled up the last one in Tangier.
What she'd be writing about:
Why longing can sometimes be more seductive than having.
PARIS, FRANCE
For obvious reasons.
Paris isn't hypothetical. Nin lived here, wrote here, loved here. She built relationships with writers and artists here. The city became part of her creative and erotic mythology.
So I'm less interested in retracing every historical address than asking: Where would she go now? What version of Paris would interest a woman who already knew the old one?
Where I’d put her:
Hôtel Particulier Montmartre
Hidden, lush, intimate, slightly theatrical. Not a grand palace where everybody knows she's arrived. I want place that feels like a secret.
What she'd do:
Walk without trying to recreate 1930s Paris. Cities aren't museums, at least in this context. I'd send her into galleries, tiny bookshops, hotel bars, gardens, studios, streets where memory is what’s happening now.
Take herself to Saint-Germain anyway. Sometimes cliché becomes cliché because the original thing was so fucking perfect.
She’d have the coffee, watch people, and write something rude and perceptive in her diary.
Spend an unreasonable amount of time in bookstores. Obviously, she’d leave with more books than luggage space. This is non-negotiable.
What she'd be writing about:
Whether we ever return to a place, or if we only meet the person we've become since leaving it.
VENICE, ITALY
For decaying beauty.
Of all five cities, Venice may be the one I most want to give her.
Water where streets should be. Palaces aging directly into canals. Mirrors. Masks. Churches. Damp stone. Boats disappearing around corners. Nothing quite stable. Everything slightly theatrical. Very Anaïs.
Where I’d put her:
Ca' Sagredo
A historic palazzo on the Grand Canal. Say no more. Staircases, frescoes, ornament, water outside the window. I don't want minimalism for her here. I want excess.
What she'd do:
Get into a boat at dusk. Gondola if we're feeling romantic. Water taxi if we're feeling cinematic. Either way, Venice should be seen from the water when the edges start disappearing.
Go to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Modern art in Peggy Guggenheim's former home feels exactly right for an imagined Nin itinerary: art and private life refusing to remain neatly separated.
Walk late. No route. No destination. Just canals, bridges, footsteps, and the occasional realization that she has absolutely no idea where she is. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
What she'd be writing about:
The strange intimacy of beautiful things falling apart.
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
For appetite.
Color. Art. History. Food. More food. Flowers. Politics. Architecture. Noise. Museums. Parks. Neighborhoods that change completely within a few blocks. And probably more food.
Mexico City doesn't ask you to choose one obsession. Which is precisely why I'd send Nin.
Where I’d put her:
Ignacia Guest House
A restored townhouse in Roma with enough design and intimacy to feel personal rather than anonymous. She needs somewhere that encourages staying in bed and writing until noon, but that makes leaving the room irresistible eventually.
What she'd do:
Spend time with Frida Kahlo. Not because every woman interested in art needs to be marched ceremonially toward Casa Azul. Because Kahlo built art out of body, desire, pain, identity, love, contradiction, and self-invention. Nin would have plenty to think about.
Disappear into the Anthropology Museum. Let’s give her hours. History tends to make the present more complicated, which seems exactly the sort of contradiction she'd enjoy.
Eat. Long lunch. Street food. Something she's never tried. Something decadent later. Appetite belongs in an Anaïs Nin itinerary.
What she'd be writing about:
What changes when a woman stops apologizing for wanting more.
THE HOTEL ROOM
Maybe this is actually the sixth destination. Because wherever I send Anaïs Nin, I keep imagining her eventually returning to the room. Shoes off. Curtains open. Drink poured. Notebook out. The city still happening below.
And that's part of what I love about literary travel. It doesn't have to mean standing in front of the house where a writer once lived. Sometimes we can start with a writer's work, appetites, obsessions, contradictions, and way of seeing the world and ask: Where would they go now? What would they notice? Where would they stay? What would they eat? Who would they talk to? What would they write when they got back to the room?
We can't know. That's the fun part, at least for me. So perhaps the real question isn't whether Anaïs Nin would choose Tangier, Lisbon, Paris, Venice, or Mexico City. It's this: Which one would you choose if you borrowed her curiosity for a few days?
