Paris main visit page 2

Map of Montmartre

Montmartre, intro

Unavoidable landmarks

Starting Jacks walking tour (1)

Cemetery-Moulin de la Galette

Passage avenue Junot, Villa Leandre (3)

Impasse Girardon, Square Buisson, allee des Brouillards (4)

Place Dalida, Musee du Vieux Montmartre (5)

Vineyards Montmartre, Cabaret Le Lapin Agile (6)

Cemetery Saint Vincent, The Paris Commune  history(7)

Cemetery Calvaire-Saint Pierre de Montmartre Espace Dali-Folie Sandrin (8)

WallaceFountains-Bateau Lavoir (9)

Place Abbesses-End of Montmartre visit 10)

Pigalle (11)

Introduction

Walking flea markets Malik, Vernaison and Paul Bert

Walking flea markets,Valles, Serpette, Biron and Cambo

Paris-18th arr-Montmartre cemetery-Moulin de la Galette

RUE LEPIC is a colourful shopping street.  Despite it looks uninteresting at first sight, the passage Lepic at 16, rue Lepic, leads you to delicious little houses the one more picturesque than the other.
Come back to the rue Lepic and enter the impasse Marie-Blanche through the rue Constance.  You are stunned. Is this Paris? You feel more being in Disneyland! You are in front of a neo-gothic manor, without any equivalent in Paris! This building, having been the propriety of the comte Charles de l‘Escalopier, a bibliothecarian, had a very rich library in this house. This building of the 19th century seems to jump out of a Walter Scott novel. It’s a part of a phenomena we will see more in Montmartre: the “follies “of Montmartre.
Return to rue Lepic again. At no.54 here is the first sign of the past presence of artists on the butte Montmartre. Theo and Vincent Van Gogh lived at this number. Keep a moment of emotion when you look up to the third floor. That’s where Vincent lived with is brother.
Take the rue Caulaincourt, join the avenue Rachel and start the visit of the CEMETERY OF MONTMARTRE .
Among the 15 cemeteries of Paris it is one of the most picturesque together with Montparnasse and Pere Lachaise. Very special and certainly worth a visit, it offers in fact in a reduced version, as much as his competitors, especially in the delirious sculptures, sometimes of a very questionable taste! Try to find the delirious or simply picturesque achievements like the replica of the Michel Angelo Moses on the grave of banker Osiris. The mausoleum dedicated to Delphine Fix  (3rd division) is worth the detour also!  But fortunately the cemetery is not only dedicated to this presumptuous people without real taste but it is a genuine Pantheon housing the most prestigious names: try to get a map to locate the tombs of Louis Jouvet, Ampere (electricity), Adolphe Sax (inventor of the saxophone, a Belgian)

Degas, Alexandre Dumas (the three musketeers)Hector Berlioz, Jacques Offenbach, Stendhal, Francois Truffaut, Fragonard, Theophile Gauthier, Eugene Labiche, Degas, Sacha Guitry, Poulbot, Greuze, Dalida and Heinrich Heine. 

Tomb of Heinrich Heine

Amateurs of funeral art don’t miss the most remarkable sculptures classed by theme and you can’t miss the most flourished tomb, the one of the singer Dalida (18th division) with a large bust of her in front.
Join the rue Lepic again by the rue Joseph-de-Maistre and take the rue de Tholoze arriving at rue Lepic just in a bend.  Climb until no. 79 and the summit of the rue Tholoze will offer you a splendid face-a face with the MOULIN DE LA GALETTE (corner rues Girardon and Lepic), the last survivor of the great windmills of Montmartre dating from 1622. The mechanism of the Moulin de la Galette braved the times and is still intact. But the history of this Moulin becomes quite bloody during the invasion of Paris in 1814 by the Prussian and Russian armies. According to legend, the four brothers Debray defended the mill furiously but even the courage of these men couldn’t help Napoleon. One of the brothers was even cut in four parts and crucified on the mill’s wings!  His wife will, during the next night, took him of this quite unusual gallows and hid him in a sac to bury him as a Christian in the Calvaire cemetery. A miniature mill is mounted on the grave to perpetuate his memory forever.
The extension of the wine fields and the diminishing of the agriculture in Montmartre signed the death warrant of the mill function of a lot of Montmartre mills who had to close down but the Moulin de la Galette transformed in a “guingette”, a tavern and a dance hall, to entertain the people. The population increased to 36,000 inhabitants against 600 in 1806. Usual customers of the Moulin were Toulouse-Lautrec (who came here to drink a salad-bowl of hot wine, aromatised with cinnamon and to keep low company with the bad boys of Montmartre), Van Gogh, Utrillo and Renoir” (see his wonderful oil “Bal au Moulin de la Galette” in the musee d’Orsay)

Bibliography

-Vie et histoire des arrondissements de Paris, ed.Hervas (1985-1988--Nouvelle Histoire de Paris, ed.Hachette--Le Pieton de Paris, by L.P.Fargue, ed.Gallimard --Guide du routard 1999, (ed.Hachette), Paris 19eme siecle, l'immeuble et la rue, by F.Loyer, ed.Hazan, 1994, --Montmartre, balades et decouvertes, by Vincent de Langlade, (own folders 1998), --Montmartre dans l'histoire de Paris, by E.Botteau ( Presse Cité, 1993) –Une Journéeàau cimetière  Montmartre Vincent de Langlade (own folders)-Les Prussiens à Paris, by Jacques Lazarigue (ed. Bonneton)