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Montmartre, famed yet hidden

Renoir, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso... and other residents

This hilltop beyond the city walls, sordid but free, became as important a center for art as Athens or Florence.

Beyond the tiny perimeter that mass tourism occupies, it remains a village where people know each other and creativity flourishes.

 

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

     

     •Examples & costs

    Toulouse-Lautrec, "Le Moulin de la Galette"

     

     

    The Moulin de la Galette toward 1900
    The site now

     

     

        • Why did artists settle here?

         

        This portrayal of a wild cancan shows the dance when it began, on the city's working-class fringe. Montmartre included.

         

        One came as well for the cheap wine sold outside city limits and the "galettes" made from windmills' wheat, and settled because rents were low, winds dispersed pollution and new galleries had sprung up near Opéra, a half-hours' stroll away.

         

        And so this hilltop became a mythical site for art's creation (about 1870-1910). We evoke its atmosphere via sites, paintings and novels.   

             

             

            • Residents allow us "privileged entries"...

             

             

             
            In "The mysteries of 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 and a high-school teacher guides our visitors... giving views that are personal and informed.

               

              And there's a make-over artist, a sculptor and jeweller, a wineshop owner who chooses his wines and knows his producers personally. 

              Teacher and guide

               

              If you can stay on, we'll suggest favorite restaurants (after having lived in Montmartre). We tell you where residents go for live music and on Sundays, come to sing themselves. Visitors are welcome, but most clients are habitués - these soirées cease during vacations.

               

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              Windmill 1900 / bakery advertisement ; Resident / Julien Debure

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