Montmartre - a Paris Tour Destination
There are two common explanations for the name Montmartre. One is that it comes from Mons Mercurii (Mercury’s Mount), after a temple of Mercury which is said to have stood here. The other is that the name is a corruption of Mont des Martyrs, since legend has it that St D,onysius (Denis), first bishop of Paris, was executed here along with - s companions Rusticus and Eleutherius .
Nowadays there are three Montmartres: the Butte Montmartre, the ‘ill (129m/423ft) on which are the Sacré-Coeur (see entry), the Place du Tertre and various little theatres and revues like Michou’s crazy drag show in Rue des Martyrs; the residential quarter of Montmartre; and the entertainment quarter on the Boulevard de Clichy with its numerous erotic establishments, which are also to be found round the legendary Moulin Rouge and in the adjoining side streets.
The Butte Montmartre is a place of legend and of history. From the 12th century this was the site of a large convent of Benedictine nuns, Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre, which was razed to the ground in 1794: only the name of Place des Abbesses is a reminder that it once stood here. For a time during the Revolution the hill was renamed Mont Marat, after the revolutionary killed by Charlotte Corday. In 1871 it was the scene of the bloody beginning and the still bloodier end of the Commune, whose defenders made their last stand here and on the Buttes Chaumont. The old wine-growing village, which was incorporated in Paris only in 1860, owed its international fame to the artists’ colony which grew up on the Butte towards the end of the 19th century and attracted chansonniers, writers and painters from far and wide, among them Manet, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Utrillo, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Picasso, Braque, Vlaminck, Emile Bernard, Courteline and Pierre MacOrlan. Picasso’s studio, the “Bateau-Lavoir”, became the centre of the Cubist movement, while the “Lapin Agile” with its chansonniers was the rendezvous of bohemian Paris. After the First World War, however, the artistic and intellectual hub of Paris moved steadily to the Montparnasse quarter .
But the charm of Montmartre lies not only in its memories. Although art and commerce have become one and the same thing in the Place du Tertre and people may argue about the “wedding-cake” architecture of the Sacré-Coeur, it is still true that if you take time to stroll about in the narrow streets and the steep flights of steps of Montmartre and enjoy the many, often quite unexpected, views of Paris it will be borne in on you very strongly what Paris has to offer -an infinite variety of impressions.
Tags: paris destinations