Where to Celebrate ‘The Great Gatsby’ Centennial

New York, the French Riviera, and other locales honor F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel

the book cover with an image of the author

“The Great Gatsby,” written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, seen here with wife, Zelda, was published 100 years ago.

(From left) Private Collection/AF fotografie/Alamy, IanDagnall Computing/Alamy

Veronica Stoddart,

Updated March 30, 2025

AARP

Published March 14, 2025

/ Updated March 30, 2025

A tale of money, decadence and longing, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel, The Great Gatsby, is turning 100 on April 10. Embodying the glamour and excesses of 1920s America, it came to define the Jazz Age through the tragic tale of Jay Gatsby and his elusive American dream.

To mark this seminal anniversary, locations from St. Paul to New York to the French Riviera are going all out to celebrate. You can travel “ceaselessly into the past,” as Fitzgerald wrote in his landmark work, by stepping into Gatsby’s and Fitzgerald’s worlds in these places.

The Great Gatsby has special resonance for boomers, the first generation to come of age reading this masterpiece after it was added to the high school literary canon in the 1960s.

Today, literary-themed vacations are a hot new trend in travel. Reading surged during COVID-19 lockdowns, and hotels and tourism companies have capitalized on that interest by using books to lure travelers.

From elaborate hotel suites to specialized tours and themed exhibits, here are seven places where fans can channel their inner Gatsby.

The Gatsby Suite at The Plaza was created for the 2013 movie, “The Great Gatsby.”

The Plaza, A Fairmont Managed Hotel

New York

The Big Apple, where Fitzgerald moved in 1919 to pursue his writing career, played a key role in his Gatsby novel. Re-live the story’s opulence at The Plaza Hotel, which served as the real-life setting for one of the book’s pivotal scenes, and where Scott and Zelda were frequent guests. Check into the Gatsby Suite, an Art Deco dream inspired by the glamour of the 1920s. Tour The Plaza and other locations where the 2013 The Great Gatsby movie was filmed via The Great Gatsby tour.

Dive into the Roaring Twenties with a jazzy new musical adaptation of the story — the Tony Award-winning The Great Gatsby at the Broadway Theatre through Sept. 7. Or catch the show during its more than 50-city North American tour starting in January 2026. Enhance the musical with The Plaza’s exclusive Gatsby Suite Experience, which includes a minimum two-night stay in the flower-festooned suite, two tickets to the show and a complimentary drink at the Broadway Theatre.

A boat tour provides views of Gatsby-esque mansions along Long Island’s North Shore.

Courtesy Big Apple Fanatics Tours

Long Island, New York

With its majestic Gatsby-esque mansions, Long Island’s North Shore, a.k.a. the Gold Coast, did more to inspire the Gatsby story than anywhere else. Great Neck, where the Fitzgeralds lived from 1922 to 1924, served as the model for the book’s newly rich West Egg, while “old money” East Egg represented tony Sands Point. On boat tours, ogle some of the Jazz Age estates that fired Fitzgerald’s imagination. At Huntington’s Oheka Castle, the second-largest private home in America, believed to be the model for Gatsby’s mansion, party like it’s the ’20s with the Gold Coast Mansions “Gatsby” Package or check into one of its two Gatsby Suites. Raise a toast to Jay and Daisy during Gatsby Hour at the OHK Bar.

The couple lived in what is now the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Zelda’s hometown of Montgomery, Alabama.

Courtesy Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum.

Montgomery, Alabama

From 1931 to 1932, the Fitzgeralds sojourned in Zelda’s hometown of Montgomery. The couple’s two-story home, where she worked on Save Me the Waltz and he on Tender Is the Night, is now the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, the only museum dedicated to their lives and legacies. You can see Scott’s writing pens, Zelda’s flapper headband, perfume bottles and cigarette holder, and the couple’s love letters.

On April 12, don your best flapper dress or Gatsby-inspired suit for the museum’s The Great Gatsby Centennial Extravaganza! Enjoy a night of 1920s-style jazz, dancing, themed cocktails and decadence. Complete the throwback experience by renting the upstairs bedrooms for an overnight stay. The Zelda Suite boasts living room furniture donated by her childhood friends, while the F. Scott Suite has the original wallpaper exposed.

St. Paul, Minnesota, honors its native son year-round. Here, a young F. Scott Fitzgerald with his mother.

Minnesota Historical Society/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

St. Paul, Minnesota

Fitzgerald’s roots run deep in St. Paul, his birthplace and home at various times. To celebrate the anniversary, the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library is hosting a series of themed events: a book reading with special guests at the Minnesota History Center on April 10; a discussion of a graphic novel adaptation at the Urban Growler Brewing Co. on April 15; an exhibit at the Minnesota History Center, March 20-May 31; and a book collection display of Minnesota Women Authors of the 1920s at the George Latimer Central Library, May 1-31. Starting in the summer, guided walking tours of Fitzgerald’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood will be offered July 1- Aug. 31; a Gatsby at 100 exhibit will be shown at the Minneapolis Institute of Art from Sept. 13-March 22, 2026; and a performance of “The Last Flapper” at the Landmark Center will take place Sept. 19-21.

St. Paul also pays homage to its native son year-round. Among the tributes to Fitzgerald are the house where he was born, which is a National Literary Landmark; and the home, a National Historic Landmark, where he revised his first novel, This Side of Paradise. There’s also his statue in Rice Park and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Reading Alcove in the George Latimer Central Library.

Louisville, Kentucky, appears throughout the novel, with the Seelbach Hilton serving as the wedding location for Tom and Daisy’s wedding. Here, the newly renovated Great Gatsby Suite parlor.

Courtesy Seelbach Hilton Hotel

Louisville, Kentucky

Fitzgerald set the birthplace of the novel’s Daisy Buchanan in Louisville, where he was stationed during World War I and partied at the Seelbach Hotel bar. The mobsters and bootleggers he likely encountered there are said to have inspired the character of Jay Gatsby. Louisville appears throughout the novel, where the hotel serves as Tom and Daisy’s extravagant wedding location. The city’s oldest operating hotel, dating to 1905, the Seelbach Hilton recently unveiled the newly renovated Art Deco Great Gatsby Suite. Can’t stay the night? Take a historian-led tour of the property, have an East Egg or West Egg omelet at Gatsby’s on Fourth or order a Prohibition-era-inspired Seelbach Cocktail at the bar.

Follow in Gatsby’s — and Fitzgerald’s — footsteps throughout Louisville with a speakeasy tasting tour of Whiskey Row, dinner at a vintage restaurant and attending the national premiere of the World Ballet Co.’s The Great Gatsby at the Louisville Palace Theatre on April 13.

Hôtel Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pin, France, was homebase for the Fitzgeralds while staying in the French Riviera.

Courtesy Hotel Belles Rives

French Riviera, France

The seaside beauty and hedonistic lifestyle of the Côte d’Azur captivated the Fitzgeralds in 1924 when they moved there to find a quiet place to write and, according to Fitzgerald, find “a new rhythm to our lives.” He finished The Great Gatsby while staying at the Villa Marie in Saint-Raphaël (still available for rent).

The glamorous couple’s legacy lives on in many of the restaurants, villas and hotels they frequented on this alluring stretch of coastline Fitzgerald called “a playground for the world.” Nowhere is this truer than the Hôtel Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pins. They stayed at the Art Deco landmark back when it was the gorgeous Villa Saint-Louis perched right on the sparkling Mediterranean. Here, Scott began writing Tender Is the Night in the rooms that now bear his name. With its period décor and portraits of Scott and Zelda in the lobby, the hotel proudly maintains its Fitzgerald connection. It will memorialize the anniversary by hosting a charity gala on June 5, holding the annual Fitzgerald Literary Prize on June 14 and releasing The Great Gatsby signature cocktail at the Fitzgerald Bar.

University of South Carolina faculty will hold a public reading of the novel to mark its 100th anniversary.

Private Collection/AF fotografie/Alamy

Columbia, South Carolina

With the most comprehensive research collection about Fitzgerald and his times housed at the University of South Carolina Libraries, an anniversary exhibit is only fitting. Via media, manuscripts and artifacts from the collection, it explores the novel’s impact on American literature and culture and Fitzgerald’s public and private life. The exhibit is open through July 15. In addition, university faculty will hold a roundtable discussion March 25, and a public reading of the novel will take place April 10.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published March 14. It has been updated to reflect new information.

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