Chez Serge The method and mess of Maison Gainsbourg

Since his death in 1991, fans of the singer-songwriter and French cultural icon Serge Gainsbourg have turned his home in a quiet street in the chic 7th arrondissement of Paris into a shrine

- Kim Willsher

For more than 30 years they have painted graffiti and portraits on the outside walls and left quotes and messages of love and affection in homage to the controversial artist hailed as both a great poet and a grandstanding provocateur.

Now the property, owned by his daughter, the actor Charlotte Gainsbourg, and kept as it was when he died - complete with overflowing ashtrays of filterless Gitanes cigarettes and a collection of police badges - is to open to the public as Maison Gainsbourg.

It was at 5 bis rue de Verneuil that Gainsbourg composed music at the piano in the main living room. Several of his album cover photographs were taken inside the house, much of which is decorated in black, including the main bedroom.

Among the 25,000 items in the property are artworks, photographs, musical instruments and Gainsbourg's clothes as well as paintings by Salvador Dalí and Claude Lalanne.

"Well, this is my house. I don't know what it is: a sitting room; a music room; a mess; a museum ...," Gainsbourg said while conducting a televised visit to the property in April 1979. He described it as an "apparent mess" but one where "everything is calculated according to particular rhythms".