Paris Walks – An Amble Around Arty Montmartre. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

An Amble Around Arty Montmartre in Paris With a Local Artist and Resident

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An amble around arty Montmartre in Paris will take you through settings that may have been depicted in countless paintings by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Utrillo, and starred in movies such as Moulin-Rouge and Amélie, but still it must be one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented of Paris neighbourhoods.

Too easily dismissed as touristy by those who haven’t taken the time to get to know it, and yet much more ‘local’ than many of the city’s quarters, Montmartre is a neighbourhood that has eluded us, despite having stayed here at a Parisian friend’s apartment on previous visits and pounded the pavements of the hilly ‘hood when Terence wrote a Paris guidebook years ago.

So we decided to discover the area that’s been our home for almost two weeks through the eyes of local resident and artist Marie Theres Berger on a walking tour with Context.

An Amble Around Arty Montmartre in Paris With a Local Artist and Resident

Our amble around arty Montmartre began on the corner of our street, outside the pretty carousel near Metro Abbesses, where local artist Marie Theres Berger introduces us to arty Montmartre.

The elegant Parisian painter describes how Montmartre grew from being a small village outside Paris that was home to poor workers who commuted into the city centre, to the residence of artists and bohemians in the early 1900s who were attracted by the picturesque scenery as much as the low rents.

Painters such as Picasso, Braque, Renoir and Modigliani would kick back at the open-air dance halls like Moulin de la Galette that flourished in the gardens of the mills that once dotted the hilltop.

It was Toulouse-Lautrec who opened the most famous cabaret of them all, the Moulin Rouge, because he had wanted to paint professional dancers (who doubled as prostitutes) because he felt they looked more attractive than ordinary women.

Paris Walks – An Amble Around Arty Montmartre. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

 

As a result, Montmartre developed into both a red-light district, centred mainly in the quarter at the bottom of the hill that became known as Pigalle, and a hotbed for creativity.

Many artists, including Picasso and Modigliani, lived and painted in the art commune, Le Bateau-Lavoir, and today the City of Paris still supports artists by providing low-cost studios here and all over Montmartre, which Marie Theres pointed out to us on our stroll.

Our walk took us by the increasingly gentrified main street of Abbesses, home to myriad restaurants, cafés, bars, and boutiques, down Rue Lepic (made famous by the café that appeared in the film Amelie), lined with flower shops, fromagerie and boulangerie, and by the Moulin Rouge on Boulevard de Clichy, to the Montmartre Cemetery, where notable Parisians are buried from Zola and Stendhal to Degas and Truffaut.

From here we crossed the historic iron bridge that cuts across the cemetery “disturbing the poor souls who mistakenly thought they were being laid to rest” Marie Terese reminds us, up Rue Durantin, once a rundown street that’s now a very fashionable address.

Along the way we peer into courtyards and stop to admire a grand 18th century folie, a weekend home of aristrocats’ escaping Paris, where Renoir once lived.

Slowing, we climbed higher, Marie Terese pointing out the enormous glass windows of artist studios, the last remaining wooden mill, and small old houses that have been dwarfed by apartment blocks.

Paris Walks – An Amble Around Arty Montmartre. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

In a quiet public garden of locals walking dogs, Marie Terese shows us the statue of the martyred Saint Denis who apparently walked, carrying his own decapitated head (!), along a path to what would become the Cathedral of St Denis.

It’s from Saint Denis, and other martyrs executed by the Romans, where Montmartre (hill of the martyr) gets its name. We also discover other rather different tributes, such as the bust of Dalida, a beautiful Egyptian-Italian who became one of France’s most famous singers.

From another public park where a family kicks a ball and locals read books while they take in the sunshine, we get a stunning view of the neo-Byzantine Basilica of Sacré-Cœur that’s much more striking than the postcard picture from the front simply because of its close proximity – it’s as if the park is the cathedral’s backyard.

As we mosey around to the front of the church, and then along the cobblestone streets of Place du Tertre and Rue Norvins, we well and truly leave the tranquil leafy streets of Montmartre that we’ve wandered for the last couple of hours and re-enter the Montmartre that most visitors know.

Weary tourists watch buskers from the tops of the stairs, a crush of people crowd the streets, tourists shopping for souvenirs and artists painting their portraits and cutting out their silhouettes for a price.

Just as quickly as we arrive, we leave the Montmartre of tourist brochures again, and at the bottom of the stairs in front of the cathedral, we walk up Rue Yvonne le Tac, past the chic boutiques and cafés crammed with locals, to Rue des Martyrs, and back ‘home’ to Rue des Abbesses – to our Montmartre.

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A travel and food writer who has experienced over 70 countries and written for The Guardian, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Feast, Delicious, National Geographic Traveller, Conde Nast Traveller, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, DestinAsian, TIME, CNN, The Independent, The Telegraph, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, AFAR, Wanderlust, International Traveller, Get Lost, Four Seasons Magazine, Fah Thai, Sawasdee, and more, as well as authored more than 40 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, DK, Footprint, Rough Guides, Fodors, Thomas Cook, and AA Guides.

2 thoughts on “An Amble Around Arty Montmartre in Paris With a Local Artist and Resident”

  1. Very nice post. Why, I’m heading to Montmartre later today for an art opening of local artists! It can be something of an elusive neighborhood, but there is definitely more than the normal tourist track + sex shops that most people know as you discovered. Sounds like a good walk!
    -Sion

  2. Sion! I’m so sorry! I’ve only just discovered this comment while revisiting this post. Please forgive me – it was so difficult at the time that we posted this as we were so busy with the project. How wonderful that you were heading to an art opening with local painters there! I wish more people knew of the ‘real’ side of Montmartre. Would love to return for even longer one day.

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