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In Montmartre, skip the tiny perimeter that mass tourism dominates...

to stroll along winding streets where the art of our times began
View from the hilltop on which stands Montmartre's church of the Sacre-Coeur... its story is tragic and basic to France.

 

Sordid but relatively free from police control, this freedom-loving hinterland became as important for art as Athens or Florence.

 

We show places that paintings made famous, tell the story of the Paris Commune because it is intimately linked to that of the Church of the Sacré-Cœur and explore a village that tourists rarely see.

 

 

  • We show the famous sites in a way that avoids the crowd of tourists, which concentrates

    within a very small parameter 

 

 

These and other stairs often appear in movies...
as does this church.

     

     

    • We visit the sites that art made famous, and show the best-known works

     

     

    Toulouse-Lautrec, "Le Moulin de la Galette"

     

     

    The Moulin de la Galette toward 1900
    The site now

     

     

     

     

    • Why did artists choose this hilltop on the city's fringe? 

         

        This picture of a wild cancan is one clue.

         

        That wine was untaxed outside city limits is another.

         

        Plus, art galleries that sprang up around the fabulous boulevards, that were only a half-hour's stroll away.

         

        And rents were low,

         

        We use paintings of the time to evoke the atmosphere that made Montmartre the epicenter for the creation of art (in about 1870-1910).

         

         

         

        That untaxed wine also explains the cabarets that grew up on Montmartre's southern fringe. They provide the setting for the Moulin Rouge,  sex shops, music stores... and crime. (But the area is safe and the stories are good.)

         

         

        • Residents give us "privileged entries"

         

         

         

         

         

        Cancan, in "Les Mystères de Paris" by Eugène Sue (1843)
        Renoir, Derain and other artists lived here; artists live here still.

        Renoir and Derain lived in this poetic place. Toulouse-Lautrec's studio was across the street, and Van Gogh lived with his brother Théo two blocks up the hill. 

           

           

          • Montmartre is still a village where people know each other

           

           

          Countess and resident

          Residents have introduced us to little-known places. They give views that are personal and informed.

           

          And there's a make-over artist, a sculptor-cum-jeweller, stores for vintage and young, imaginative clothes and accessories, a wineshop owner who chooses his wines and knows his producers personally. 

           

          We'll suggest favorite restaurants (after having lived in Montmartre), tell you where residents go for live music or to a pocket-sized theater at the end of a tiny street.
          Teacher of high-school French

               

               

              • Costs: please CLICK

              ° For specialists' and residents' fees,  please ask us.


              Credits: Windmill 1900 / bakery advertisement; Countess (resident) / Julien Debure ; teacher (resident) / she sent it; other photos / Claude Abron

               

               

               

              Unexpected Paris guided tours