Motivated by an indecomposability criterion of Xun Lin for the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves on a smooth projective variety X, we study the paracanonical base locus of X, that is the intersection of the base loci of ωX ⊗Pα, for all α ∈ Pic 0 X. We prove that this is equal to the relative base locus of ωX with respect to the Albanese morphism of X. As an application, we get that bounded derived categories of Hilbert schemes of points on certain surfaces do not admit non-trivial semi-orthogonal decompositions. We also have a consequence on the indecomposability of bounded derived categories in families. Finally, our viewpoint allows to unify and extend some results recently appearing in the literature.Conjecture 1.1. Let X be a smooth projective variety. If D b (X) has no non-trivial semiorthogonal decompositions, then X is minimal, i.e., the canonical line bundle ω X is nef.Examples of varieties whose derived categories admit no non-trivial semiorthogonal decompositions are, for instance, varieties with trivial, or, more generally, algebraically trivial canonical bundle ([Br] and [KO, Corollary 1.7], respectively), curves of genus ≥ 1 [Ok], varieties whose Albanese morphism is finite [Pi, Theorem 1.4]. 1 It is well known that the converse direction in Conjecture 1.1 is false (a counterexample is furnished by Enriques surfaces [Zu]), but we have the following folklore (see [BGL, Conjecture 1.6], or [BBOR, Question E]):Conjecture 1.2. Let X be a smooth projective variety. If ω X is nef and effective, then D b (X) has no non-trivial semi-orthogonal decompositions.At the moment of writing, this conjecture (as even the above Conjecture 1.1) is widely open in general and there are just some (classes of) varieties for which it has been verified: see [KO, BBOR], besides the references already quoted above. A particularly interesting case is given by symmetric Key words and phrases. Derived categories, semi-orthogonal decompositions, Albanese morphism, canonical bundle, paracanonical base locus.The author is supported by the ERC Consolidator Grant ERC-2017-CoG-771507-StabCondEn.1 To be precise, in [Pi, Theorem 1.4], Pirozhkov proved that such varieties are noncommutatively stably semiorthogonally indecomposable, which is a stronger notion than indecomposability.