The History of Montmartre – Tortured Saints, Whores, and Larger-than-Life Artists

Despite its distance from the center of Paris, the Montmartre district (18th arrondissement) is considered one of the most important tourist attractions in the City of Lights, such that if you don't visit it on your first visit to the French capital, it's as if you haven't visited Paris at all.

As a result, Montmartre has become a tourist cliché, a production line that includes the obligatory visit toMoulin Rouge, buy a caricature of yourself at a dubious price in Place du Tertre and take a selfie with the backdrop of Paris, seen from below, while standing on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur.

Montmartre is much more than that. In fact, it is one of the districts with the most interesting history in Paris. You will find a decapitated man walking around and giving speeches, a nun who becomes a king's mistress, people who passed a resolution to cancel several months of the year and of course some of the greatest artists of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Therefore, whether it is theYour first time in Paris And whether you're returning to Montmartre for the tenth time, I promise you that what you read now will enhance your visit to Montmartre and help you better understand the colorful and complicated story of this charming district.

Suddenly a headless man gets up and starts walking.

The hill of Montmartre It rises 129 meters above sea level and is considered the highest point in Paris. In ancient times, when Paris Also called Lutèce, the Gauls believed that this hill had mystical powers, so the Druids erected primitive stone structures there, called megaliths.

After Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, these structures were replaced by temples to the gods Jupiter, Mercury, and the god of war Mars. Some claim that it was the latter who gave the hill its name (Mont Mars, which became Montmartre), but others claim that the name came from the word Martyr, meaning the Mount of the Martyrs, or the Mount of the Tortured Saints. So who was the martyr who gave the hill its name?

This was a man with the somewhat ironic name, Dionysus (the Roman god of wine), who converted to Christianity and began preaching in Lutetia during the 3rd century AD. The Romans did not like his attempts to convert the city's inhabitants to Christianity, and after several warnings, he was thrown into prison and sentenced to death, along with his two assistants, Rusticus and Éleuthère.

The original plan was to behead Dionysus, whose name was later changed to Denis, and his assistants near the temple of Mars, which was on the top of the hill. However, the soldiers who were supposed to carry out the task got tired halfway and decided to execute the three evangelists where they were arrested (this place is on the corner of the rue des Martyres and Yvonne Le Tac).

Then, after his head was cut off, a miracle happened! Dionysus stood up, took his head in his hands and started walking. He stopped at a spring, which is now about a 2-minute walk from the statue of Delida (at Impasse Girardon), washed his head of the blood and continued walking a few kilometers north, preaching without ceasing until he collapsed and died. In the place where he collapsed, a church will be built in the future Basilica of Saint-Denis Whereas in the place where his head was cut off, another monastery was built, about which and its monks (and especially its nuns), we will immediately count.

The abbess becomes the mistress of the King of France.

Some say that the first chapel was built on the site of Saint Denis' execution sometime in the 9th century, but we don't have much evidence for it. What we do know for sure is that a chapel was built on the site in 1096 and a monastery was founded on the hilltop in 1133 under the patronage of Adelaide of Savoy (1100-1154), wife of King Louis VI (reigned 6-1108).

The only important building remaining from this monastery is the Église Saint-Pierre de Montmartre, one of the oldest churches in Paris (second only to theSaint-Germain-des-Prés), where Adelaide of Savoy is buried. However, although almost no trace of it remains, the importance of the monastery cannot be underestimated and it is worth saying a few words about it.

First, since its founding, the monastery has become a popular place of pilgrimage, visited by, among others, Pope Alexander III (reigned 1159-1181), Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered by Henry II (reigned 2-1154), who also came to the monastery, and finally King Charles VI (reigned 1189-6), who came here in the late 1380th century to try to recover from his madness.

Secondly, it was the first feminist monastery in history (as far as I understand), because although both monks and nuns lived in it, if the monastery always had the last word, woe to the one who changed her mind (the monastery's gallows stood where Tartar Square is today).

In 1534, Ignace de Loyola arrived at the monastery as part of a pilgrimage. In the chapel, created on the site of Saint Denis' execution, he founded, together with his companions, the famous Jesuit order, which reached the height of its success during the 17th century, and was responsible, until the beginning of the 20th century, for some of the best schools in France, where the elite were educated.

However, if you think that the nuns there were only engaged in prayer, hard work and charity, you are mistaken. Already in the days of Francis I (king from 1 to 1515), there were persistent rumors that the convent provided nuns to satisfy the king's sexual desires (the residents of Paris, at that time, even called the convent "the main supplier of prostitutes to the king").

In the late 16th century, Henry IV (reigned 4-1589) attempted to conquer Paris during the Wars of Religion with the Catholics, and decided to place his cannons on the summit of Montmartre, in order to bombard Paris. There he met Claude de Beauvilliers (1610-1573), a 1626-year-old woman of noble family origin, her father being the Comte de Saint Aignan, who arranged for her the job of abbess.

The dress-chasing king failed to conquer Paris that year. He did so without firing a single shot, a few years later, when he converted to Catholicism, but he did manage to win the heart of the abbess. This affair came to an end because of one of her mistakes, she introduced him to Gabrielle d'Estrées (1573-1599), with whom the king fell in love immediately and made her his main mistress (you can read about this in the article Gabrielle D'Estrada – The Mistress Who Almost Became Queen of France).

The monastery of Montmartre continued to exist until French Revolution, and made a good living both from the pilgrims and from the wine industry that arose in the area. Today, all that remains of this industry is a small winery near the Montmartre Museum, which those in the know say produces terrible wine, but in the past the place was actually known for its wine, as evidenced by the neighborhood of la Goutte-d'Or (Golden Drop), located near the Barbès-Rochechouart metro station and named after an excellent winery that once stood there (today it is a slum, which only brave or foolish people approach).

The end of the convent was bad and bitter. It was closed in 1790 and in 1794 the nuns and the abbess Marie-Louise de Laval-Montmorency (1723-1794) were tried for conspiring against the fatherland. The arguments that the abbess was blind, deaf and paralyzed did not help, the judges determined that she “silently and blindly plotted against France” and she and the other nuns were executed, where the Place de la Nation is today.

Following all this, the Montmartre convent was demolished and the land on which it stood was sold to developers. The only remaining reminder of the fact that there was once a convent here is the name of the rue Abbesses (abbey women), now one of the most important culinary streets in Montmartre, named after those unfortunate nuns who were executed.

Now, with the end of the religious chapter of Montmartre, a new chapter in the history of the place has begun, and it will be no less interesting (and certainly no more modest).

Bread, Commune and Entertainment

Montmartre without the monastery was “just” a village, growing vines and becoming a center for flour milling, thanks to its height, which was ideal for windmills. However, its strategic location was not forgotten and when the Russians and their allies conquered Paris in 1814, they decided to place their headquarters there.

After the fighting ended, the officers and soldiers raided the restaurant closest to the headquarters, run by Catherine Lamotte, nicknamed la Mère Catherine. Since the Russians were not known for their manners or patience, they began shouting “Bitsere” (Russian: “Hurry”), and so we had our first bistro there, which still exists today (its address is: 6, place du Tertre), although it is now a tourist trap.

During the 19th century, Montmartre changed its face due to the Industrial Revolution. The peaceful village with its many windmills gradually disappeared and was replaced by warehouses, factories and railway tracks, which came fromThe Gare du Nord (Paris' northern train station) and led people to northern France. In 1860, the village was annexed to Paris, and as a result, the human composition of Montmartre also changed. Instead of farmers, who had worked their land for generations, poor laborers came here, who worked in the surrounding factories.

All of this turned Montmartre into a hotbed of political radicalism, and it exploded in March 1871. In order to understand what happened there, we have to go back a little to 1870, when Napoleon III declared war on Prussia, was wounded in the thigh at Sedan, was taken prisoner, and as a result, the Second Empire collapsed and the Third Republic was established.

The residents of Montmartre join the National Guard, which aims to defend Paris from the Prussians, who have begun to besiege it, and even buy a number of cannons with their own money. These cannons were placed on the top of Montmartre because of its strategic location, but as far as I know, they never fired a single shell, because the Prussians were not trying to conquer Paris, but simply to starve it out.

Indeed, at the beginning of 1871, after several failed attempts to lift the siege of Paris, the government of the Republic surrendered. The result was terrible: France lost the province of Alsace And part of a district Lorraine, it is required to pay heavy war reparations andPalace of Versailles (Oh shame) The German Empire is established.

The peace treaty with Germany created enormous unrest among the left, who did not support the bourgeois republic that had signed the treaty. To top it all off, the republic added a crime to their crime by sending two generals to remove the cannons from the top of Montmartre and transfer them to one of the French army camps.

When the inhabitants of Montmartre heard about this, they seized the two generals and after a show trial, both were executed by firing squad on Rue Chevalier de la Barre (where today there is a concentration of tourist shops). Thus began the Commune, which lasted a few short months and ended with a terrible massacre and the burning of some of Paris' iconic buildings, including theHotel de Ville וTuileries Palace.

I will not write in depth about the Commune here, as this topic requires a separate article, but there is no doubt that it became part of the mythology of Montmartre. For example, it was the mayor of Montmartre, Jean-Baptiste Clément (1836-1903), and not Pini Gershon, who wrote the poem Le Temps des cerises (The Cherry Season), which became a kind of anthem for those who participated in the Commune.

This song can be heard, to this day, at the Chanson Club. At the Agile Rabbit, which is about a 5-minute walk from the square named after Jean-Baptiste Calment. Here is the song, performed by the one and only Yves Montand, for the benefit of those who are not supposed to be there soon (or just miss it):

And this is how it sounded during a performance atAt the Agile Rabbit

The Commune left behind, unwittingly, another “souvenir” that changed the skyline of Paris forever. I am of course talking about the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris (Basilique du Sacré Cœur de Montmartre), located at the top of Montmartre.

About two years after the end of “Bloody Week,” in which Paris was retaken by the government of the Third Republic, the government decided that it was time to atone for the crimes of the Commune and build a church on the summit of Montmartre, not far from where the uprising began.

The winner of the tender for the design of the basilica was the architect Paul Abadie (1812-1884) and the cornerstone was laid in 1875. However, this church was not fully completed until 1919 for three main reasons.

The first reason was due to complex engineering problems, which required the digging of 83 wells into the hill, in order to strengthen the foundations of the church that would be built. The second reason was due to the fact that the church's architect died in 1884 and over the following years four architects were replaced, one after the other, each of whom decided to change some of the plans of his predecessors.

However, the main reason for the delay in the construction of the basilica was due to a massive social struggle waged by the residents of the hill and left-wingers, led by Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), who would later become the mythical Prime Minister of France during World War I.

Clemenceau, who had been mayor of Montmartre during the siege of Paris, won the 1882 elections and, together with a left-wing coalition in the National Assembly, did everything in his power to freeze funding for the construction of the church. However, in the end, it became clear that if the government did not allow the church to be built, it would have to pay a whopping 12 million francs to the people who had already invested in the project, based on promises from the previous government, and the left had no choice but to allow construction to continue.

As mentioned, the construction work was completed about a year after the end of World War I, and although the residents of Montmartre continued to boycott it and pray in the nearby Saint-Pierre Church, despite everything it became one of the symbols of Paris alongside the Eiffel Tower And the Church of Notre Dame.

Is it an impressive building with a stunning view of Paris, or a “cream cake” that has nothing to do with anything? I’ll leave that to you to decide.

Montmartre is becoming the new entertainment center of Paris

As we know, in 1860, Montmartre was transformed from a small village into the 18th arrondissement of Paris. The customs walls that separated the village from the city were demolished and in their place new boulevards were built, the best known of which are Rochechouart and Clichy. Just like the grand boulevards in the 9th arrondissement, the new boulevards here also became a kind of entertainment center, with a series of clubs opening along them that would become legendary over the years. But before we begin to tell the stories of these clubs, we must ask, what was the secret of their charm? In one word: the people.

As I wrote earlier, Montmartre attracted the fringes of French society and the bohemian scene, which was an integral part of it. The middle and upper middle classes of Paris, who had hitherto hung out in the decent cafes and theaters along the boulevards of the 9th arrondissement, were looking for something more “exotic” and found just that in the clubs along the boulevards of the 18th arrondissement.

There they could “mix” in dark cabarets with pimps or colorful but starving bohemians, while drinking cheap alcohol and listening to chansons, some of which humorously despised them and their lifestyle. One of these clubs, which became very famous thanks to its poster, designed by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (1859-1924), was the “Black Cat” club (Le Chat Noir), originally located at 84 Boulevard de Rochechouart.

The club's guests were welcomed by a man dressed as a soldier from the Pope's Swiss Guard, and inside, in a rather dark space, they were served absinthe, a drink that was later outlawed because it caused blindness and madness. In general, the theme of alcohol was very important in this institution, since one of its founders, Emile Godot, had founded the Society of Hydropaths (people who cannot drink water) a few years earlier, a hint that they had no choice but to drink alcohol (and a lot of it).

The club quickly became a huge success and a symbol of the entire district, and one could find there, among others, the English heir to the throne (the future King Edward VII), but also quite a few artists such as the musician Claude Debussy. No wonder Rodolphe Sallis said, “God created the world, Napoleon the Legion of Honor and I created Montmartre!”

Alongside Rudolph Salis and Emile Godot, in the most famous character of cabaret The black cat is the famous chansonnier Aristide Bruant (1851-1925), whose image became immortal thanks to the famous poster painted by Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901).

Night after night, the rich and famous of Paris flocked to the dim club to hear Aristide Bruin “tear them to pieces” with his witty chansons. Here is one of his most famous songs (which can also be heard at the Au Lapin Agile club, sometimes).

And here is another song by Aristide Bruin, which I really like, called “The Funeral of the Mother-in-Law.” I bring you this song in a more modern performance by the band CHANSON PLUS BIFLUORÉE. Those who know the The French language He will surely laugh at the combination of the tragic lyrics, which describe how people are crying and screaming how cursed they are that their mother-in-law has passed away, and the cheerful music. It turns out that Jews are not the only ones who have mother-in-law jokes…

What did those who wanted to dance and maybe eat something do? They went, of course, to the Moulin de la Galette (loosely translated: the cake windmill). It was a windmill that had existed since the Middle Ages. During the 19th century, it was purchased by the Debray family, who began selling cakes (if you want to know what these cakes look like, you are welcome to read the article about La Galette de Rua), so that those who were waiting for their wheat to be ground at the station would not starve. This is how the place got its name.

At some point, the owners decided to turn the area near the station into a kind of restaurant combined with a dance hall, where there were balls, which were immortalized thanks to the famous painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1910).

If you were a little hungrier and less interested in dancing, you had two other options. The first option was the restaurant Le père Lathuille, located at 7 Rue de Clichy, not far from the border of the 17th arrondissement and not far from a famous restaurant, which still exists today, namely the Brasserie Wepler.

This restaurant was also immortalized by an important painter, this time it was Edouard Mane, who painted the restaurant in 1879.

Another option, if you were craving a folk buffe bourguignon, was to go to the Cabaret des Assasins, which later became Au Lapin Agile, which we mentioned earlier in the article. The place is still located at 22 Rue des Saules and during the 19th and early 20th centuries, quite a few of the greatest bohemians ate there, including Picasso, who also painted the place. Today, unfortunately, they no longer serve food (but they do serve excellent cherry liqueur), so if you want to go for an evening of tasting there, I highly recommend having dinner beforehand (you can book a ticket for the place atLink this).

And of course, we can't end this section, which deals with Montmartre's clubs, without mentioning the Moulin Rouge, founded by Charles-Joseph Zidler (1831-1897) and Joseph Oller (1839-1922) in 1889, just in time for the World's Fair, which brought us the Eiffel Tower.

Since this article is already becoming quite long, I won't go into detail about the famous club, but if you would like to learn a little about its history and decide whether you also want to join the crowds of tourists who spend their evenings there, you are welcome to read the article. Moulin Rouge – Tourist Trap or a Show Not to Be Missed??

La Boheme

No article about the history of Montmartre can be complete without talking, at least a little, about the Bohemians who lived there during the 19th and early 20th centuries (some of whom we already mentioned a little earlier).

The first bohemian to live in Montmartre, to his detriment, was the poet Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855). He was admitted to a mental hospital in a building called La Folie Sandrin, at 22 Rue des Norvins (Folie in French means madness but also a country estate, built by nobles outside the city, which is the origin of the name of the building, which had previously been a country estate). Unfortunately, the treatment did not help and he hanged himself in 1855, leaving a note for his aunt, in which he asked her not to wait for him because she was going to have a sleepless night.

After the poet, painters began to come to Montmartre, initially Edgar Degas (1834-1917), who loved to climb the hill and paint the view from it. He was joined by the famous painter Vincent van Gogh (or rather Van Gogh), who lived on Rue Lepic.

But there is no doubt that the 19th-century painter most associated with Montmartre is Auguste Renoir, whose famous painting, Le Moulin de la Galette, we have already seen. As we can see in his paintings, the inhabitants of Montmartre, probably the Drennoirs, are very different from the group of unfortunates drowning their sorrows in absinthe, painted by Toulouse-Lautrec. Instead, we see healthy, rural people dancing for their own pleasure.

Another lesser-known painter, who I personally really like, is Francisque Poulbot (1879-1946). He lived most of his life in Montmartre and painted mainly the children of the area. What makes his paintings unique is the fact that although they were poor and unhappy children, in Poulbot's paintings, there is no unhappiness, but quite the opposite, he manages to show their joy of life.

Today, on the little street named after him (Rue Poulbot), you can find a lovely (if a bit touristy) restaurant. As you can see in the picture below, its facade contains copies of his paintings, so you can get an impression.

By the way, Fulvo not only painted children but also invested a significant portion of his money to establish a clinic to treat those street children. Furthermore, it was Fulvo, in collaboration with other famous residents of the neighborhood, who established, during the 20s, the Republic of Montmartre.

It was a democratic republic, and in democracy as in democracy, there were parties (for example, the Cubist Party, one of whose members was a monkey named Existence) and there were even bills (for example: to abolish the months of December, January, and February). What can I say and what can I say, suddenly Israeli democracy doesn't seem so... (you are invited to complete the sentence).

Of course, one cannot talk about Montmartre without mentioning quite a few other painters such as Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) and her famous son Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955), whose ability to drink many liters of alcohol earned him the nickname "Maurice Utrillo."

In the future I promise articles about them and other famous painters in Montmartre, but until then I highly recommend you go and visit the Montmartre Museum, which is located in the house where they both lived. There you can see some of their works, and more importantly, learn about all those painters, both better known and less well known, who lived and worked in Montmartre in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century (you can buy a ticket to the museum in advance via This link).

It is impossible to conclude a chapter on the artists of Montmartre without mentioning Picasso, who settled there at the beginning of the 20th century. The penniless Picasso lived in a building known as the “Laundry Ship” (Bateau Lavoir), because its shape resembled the ships that sailed on the Seine and were used by laundresses who washed clothes in its waters.

It was an ugly building, without heating, but with extremely cheap rent, and here Picasso, along with quite a few other painters, lived and created (here, for example, Picasso painted “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” in 1907, a groundbreaking painting that heralded the birth of Cubism, or as I call the genre, “the school of exceptionally ugly painting”).

Since it was a mythical building, it was decided to make it a conservation building, but alas! A fire that broke out there in the early 1970s left no trace of the building. Today, there is a hotel and another building with a display case where you can see a series of pictures of the life of the Bateau-Beaure (all of this can be seen in Place Émile Goudeau, which is halfway between Rue Abbesses and Place Tertre).

The difficult conditions in Montmartre and the fact that Picasso's work did not truly become an integral part of the place, caused him and the vast majority of painters who lived there during his time to leave forMontparnasse, as soon as their economic situation allowed it. The move during the second decade of the 20th century symbolized the end of Montmartre's heyday and its transformation into a kind of tourist trap, where people come to smell the mythology of Bohemia, which is no longer there, and to gaze over the rooftops of Paris from the Sacra square.

So what remains of all this heritage today except Montmartre Museum And a square where all sorts of painters would be happy to draw a caricature of you for a few dozen euros? Maybe it's just that Aznavour song, which, like Montmartre, has become a cliché, but what a cliché...

Montmartre – Tourist Information

Did this article make you want to take a walk in Montmartre? Excellent! I created this page especially for you. Montmartre for the traveler , where you will find travel itineraries, recommendations, and quite a bit of other important information that will help you plan your trip there.

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