Montmartre Walking Tour The Bohemian Way with Salomea

Where we begin and where Montmartre's story begins too.

Before Paris swallowed it in 1860, this was a village on a hill: farmland, vineyards, quarries and around thirty windmills. Because it sat outside the city walls, the wine here was untaxed so Parisians climbed the hill to drink cheaply, and the cabarets followed.

That cheapness is why the artists came. Painters who couldn't afford Paris could afford Montmartre.

We start in front of the most famous cabaret in the world, and walk up into the village that is still, in places, exactly what it was.

54 Rue Lepic the third-floor apartment where Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo from 1886 to 1888.

He arrived painting in the dark browns of Dutch realism. He left painting in colour. Those two years in Montmartre are where it happened.

And it was here, in the summer of 1887, that he painted his first sunflowers two years before the famous ones in Arles.

You can't go inside; people still live there. But you can stand where he stood.

The oldest surviving windmill in Montmartre and the site of the darkest story on this hill.

In 1814, when foreign troops reached Paris, the miller refused to abandon it. What happened to him is the reason his family's name is on every map of Montmartre today and the reason Renoir painted this place sixty years later.

It's not a gentle story. I'll tell it to you here.

A shabby wooden building with one tap and no heating, where Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907 the painting that broke Western art open.

Modigliani, Braque, Juan Gris and the poet Apollinaire all worked here.

It still looks like nothing at all. That is exactly the point.

The second of Montmartre’s two surviving mills the Radet, moved to this corner in 1924. The restaurant beneath it carries the name Moulin de la Galette today, and this is the one everybody photographs.

But the name belongs to the dance hall the Debray family opened at the other mill, the one we stood under earlier. Renoir painted that one in 1876.

Two mills, one name, and almost everyone gets them the wrong way round.

Here you'll understand what Montmartre actually means.

A quiet garden behind the windmills that almost no visitor finds. At the far end stands a statue of a man holding his own head and the story behind him is where this hill got its name.

I'll tell you the rest when we're standing in front of him.

A small square named after one of the most loved voices in France and one of its saddest lives.

She lived just behind here for twenty-five years and is buried a few streets away. Her bust stands in the middle of the square, and one part of it is polished bright gold from the hands of passers-by.

I'll show you which part, and why.

The little pink house on the corner of Rue de l'Abreuvoir, and probably the most photographed building in Montmartre.

It was painted by Utrillo, and the woman who opened it fed the artists of the Bateau-Lavoir when none of them could pay. It's still a restaurant today.

The best photograph is from one particular spot I'll show you where to stand.

The only working vineyard in Paris 1,700 vines on the north slope, where the old vineyards of the village once ran.

It's harvested every October with a parade through the streets, and the wine is sold at auction for charity. Nobody will tell you it's good wine.

It survives because of what the people of Montmartre did in 1929 to stop this land being built on. That's the story.

A tiny pink and green cabaret that has been open since 1860, and still puts on songs most nights almost exactly as it did a century ago.

Picasso drank here when he had no money. He once paid his bill with a painting and what happened to that painting afterwards is one of the better stories in Montmartre.

Look at the sign above the door. There's a rabbit on it, and the name is a pun that only works in French.

The old village square, and the heart of Montmartre since long before Paris swallowed it.

Artists still set up their easels here every single morning and there's a reason there are exactly that many of them and no more. The square is regulated, and the places are fought over.

Picasso, Utrillo and Modigliani all worked around this square when the rent was nothing and nobody came. We'll talk about what it was, what it became, and whether that's a loss.

As a painter myself, I have opinions about this place.

We finish at the white basilica on the summit, where the whole of Paris opens up beneath you on a clear day you can see thirty kilometres.

Most people photograph it and move on. Almost nobody knows why it was built, who paid for it, or what stood on this hill before it. It is not a comfortable story, and it begins with the Commune of 1871 right here, with cannons on this spot.

We end with the view, and with what the view is standing on.

From here you can walk back down through the village, take the funicular to Anvers métro, or simply stay a while. I'll make sure you know how to get wherever you're going next.