Places to discover

Pigalle
From place d’Anvers to place de Clichy, night revellers, neon lights and illuminated signs ensure that, almost for as long as Paris has existed, this area never sleeps. In the Paris of yesteryear, wine, taxed at the entry to the city, was more expensive. So, Montmartre was the lively out-of-town place to go with its mix of lower classes, artists, young women and free thinkers. Later, the village was absorbed into the capital but the rowdiness continued. Piano-bars, night clubs, private clubs, concert halls, café-theatres, music halls, dinner shows, pubs, cabarets lasted for three seasons or over one hundred years. In the 1960s, Serge Gainsbourg sang “les petits gars de Liverpool” causing a sensation at the Bus Palladium. Others followed. When the Paris of Jacques Dutronc “awakes” at 5am, place Blanche – at the end of turbulent rue Fontaine – often looks the worse for wear. But after a short rest, all is well again.




Espace Dali Montmartre
sanctuary at basement level showcases 300 works by the major Catalan artist in a scenography alternating sound and light. Engravings, sculptures and surrealist furniture, including the famous Montres Molles, Alice in Wonderland, the Mae West lip sofa, The Space Elephant and an array of fantastic creatures, recreating the phantasmagorias of Salvador Dalí. On certain dates, workshops initiate children into the playful creativity of the great surrealist.
11, rue Poulbot (18th). M° Abbesses, Anvers. Tél. : 01 42 64 40 10. Daily: 10am-6pm. Audioguides available for hire. €10 – RR: €7/€6. Under 8s: free.
www.daliparis.com



Cimetière de Montmartre
Lovers of Montmartre come to the cemetery to admire the outdoor art, catch a glimpse of the sun, watch the squirrels hopping between maple trees or to make the acquaintance of a string of poets, generals, thinkers, inventors and the Lady of the Camellias. Discover Vigny, Nijinsky or Guitry in a labyrinth of mossy rows and irregular stone steps. Cross the path of stray tomcats, a bust of Rodin, the bridge of Caulaincourt and finally, Alexandre Dumas, Zola, Degas and Dalida. Then, it’s off again to look for Poulbot, Truffaut and Feydeau. Up above the statues and carved chapels, and the tombs of Stendhal and Berlioz, a brood of young sparrows chirp high in the chestnut trees. Eleven enchanting hectares.




Musée de Montmartre
In the 17th century, this folly was a country house belonging to the actor Rosimond, Molière’s successor. Much later, Auguste Renoir, Raoul Dufy, Francisque Poulbot, Suzanne Valadon and her son Maurice Utrillo had their studios here. Today, the house enables you to discover a chapter of history, complete with cabaret signs and dance posters. The Chat Noir, the Lapin Agile, the dances at the Moulin-Rouge and the Moulin de la Galette, and the Divan Japonais were the top spots. The cabaret singer Aristide Bruant also brought a crowd of night-revelling poets. La Goulue, Jane Avril, Nini Patte-en-l’air and other stage goddesses posed for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Théophile Steinlen, Adolphe Willette and other artists.
12, rue Cortot (18th). M° Anvers, Lamarck-Caulaincourt. Tél. : 01 49 25 89 37. Tue to Sun: 11am-6pm, except 1 Jan, 1 May and 25 Dec. €7 – RR: €5.50.
www.museedemontmartre.fr

Jardin sauvage Saint-Vincent
For a long time, this sloping parcel of land was overgrown with alders, foxgloves, brambles, ivy and wildlife. One day the city’s landscape gardeners decided to make it into a garden again. But impressed by the wild natural beauty of the site, the spades and secateurs were put to one side and it was decided to preserve this fragile and poetic site as a place for observing the ecosystem and biodiversity, pond life, trees, shrubs and the charm of wild flowers.





Musée Gustave Moreau
At a time of world-stage museums, here is the exclusive domain of an artist, laid-out by himself, in his family home. At the end of his life, Gustave Moreau assembled precious memorabilia in a “little sentimental museum” on the first floor. In 1895, he had two huge glazed workshops built on the upper floors, linked by a fine spiral staircase of wrought-iron steps. On the plum pink walls there are some 5,000 wooden-framed drawings, and your eyes – and soul? – are lifted to the ceilings, where Italian, symbolist and fauvist paintings are perched – an eclectic, fantastical body of work. Chimaeras, centaurs, vivid blue and green enamel, dancing Salomes, Orpheus charming the animals, Jupiter and Sémélé, flamboyant red and black, Christ bleeding, unicorns, mystical flowers, Galatée, Pasipha, Herod… all of these, said the master, are like a “flight to distant shores of sacred, unknown and mysterious countries”.
14, rue de la Rochefoucauld (9th). M° Trinité. Tél. : 01 48 74 38 50. Daily: 10am-12.45pm, 2-5.15pm, except Tue. 1 Jan, 1 May and 25 Dec. €5 – RR: €3. Under 18s and 1st Sun of the month: free.
www.musee-moreau.fr


Musée de la Vie romantique
A tree-lined path, a rectangular flower garden, a little mansion far from the buzz of the city: this is where the painter and sculptor Ary Scheffer lived from 1830 to 1858. Delacroix, George Sand, Chopin dropped in as neighbours; the whole of the intellectual and artistic world of Paris (Liszt, Rossini, Turgenev, Dickens, etc.) frequented his workshop-salon. Even today, as you go from room to room, Chopin will accompany you with his piano as you discover George Sand, and the paintings of Ary Scheffer and his contemporaries.
www.vie-romantique.paris.fr*




Musée de l'Erotisme
Eroticism is an art and it needed a showcase. Pigalle was the obvious home for these statuettes, amulets, saucy photos, satirical sketches, little tantric totems, painted, modelled, sculpted and engraved idols. Two rounded Buddhas form the entrance to this arousing but never shocking world, where 2,000 objects displayed over seven exhibition floors and from all over the world, explore popular, contemporary and sacred erotic art.
72, bd de Clichy (18th). M° Blanche. Tél. : 01 42 58 28 73. Daily: 10-2am. €8 – RR: €3.
www.musee-erotisme.com




Parc Clichy-Batignolles
This park – already open but still being laid out – will be the biggest green area in the north-west of Paris. It will need 624 trees, 5,600 shrubs, 200 climbing plants, 51,000 perennial plants and aquatic plants, 47,000 bulbs, 8,400 sq.m lawned areas, 25,000 sq.m of gardens, 2,900 sq.m of ornamental ponds, and 3,460 sq.m of play areas for children and adolescents to embellish it. You have probably guessed: the park’s three themes will be sport, water and the seasons.
172, rue Cardinet (17th). M° Brochant.




Quartier des Batignolles
church, garden and brand new Clichy-Batignolles park. Batignolles was annexed to Paris in 1860. At the time, this ancient hamlet between the city and fields, close to Montmartre, offered cheap living for artists. Impressionism took form here in a café frequented by Manet, Degas, Cézanne, Monet and Renoir. This was not just a centre for artists, and writers Zola, Verlaine, Max Jacob, Éluard and Simenon also lived here. And as you stroll down the rue des Dames and rue des Batignolles, something tells you that these windows, tables and welcoming café counters are still a refuge for tamed bohemians and a slower pace of life.




Place des Abbesses
underground station in Paris – it is thirty metres below ground – but hale and hearty walkers are encouraged to climb the fresco-painted steps before emerging exhausted into the little square to catch their breath on one of the benches. In a glance, one takes in the art nouveau metro entrance by Hector Guimard, the merry-go-round, the cast-iron street lights and the Wallace fountain. In the adjoining Square Jéhan-Rictus, kids play at the foot of a wall in enamelled lava, where “I love you” is declared in 311 languages. Opposite, the church Saint-Jean-l’Évangéliste, nicknamed Notre-Dame-des-Briques (Our-Lady-of-Bricks) since 1904, mixes Byzantine and art nouveau influences. On both sides of rue des Abbesses, rue Durantin, and rue de la Vieuville, and rue Yvonne-le-Tac… trendy local boutiques rub shoulders with café terraces, where it is nice to do nothing more than watch the world go by.




Avenue Junot and villa Léandre
Still on the hillside of the Butte, but beyond the sculpture of the Passe-Muraille – in the square where its creator Marcel Aymé once lived – is the start of avenue Junot with its cubic art deco unfussy architecture, the beauty of pure forms, and harmony of volumes, as at No 15, the house built in 1926 for the dada poet Tristan Tzara. Further on, there is a new change of scene at Villa Léandre, where you can wander around in a fairytale setting between two rows of red and white brick Anglo-Norman pavilions with painted shutters, arbors and chocolate-box London-style gardens.




Halle Saint-Pierre – musée d’Art brut, Art singulier et outsider
Below the Sacré-Coeur, the Saint-Pierre fabric market is gaily-coloured and its neighbouring covered multicoloured market offers popular, naive and unusual art. Built in 1868 by a disciple of Baltard, this ancient covered market houses a cheerful cultural centre. Stop by for a snack or a coffee, amidst the canvasses and works exhibited by the gallery or to flick through the colourful art books in the bookshop, under the circle of the mezzanine. This is also the place to come for shows and concerts in the auditorium, activity trails for children and, of course, for the 600 items in the Max Fourny collection, representing Naive art from the 1970s. 2, rue Ronsard (18th). M° Abbesses. Tél. : 01 42 58 72 89.
www.hallesaintpierre.org


Marché Barbès
On Saturday mornings under the overhead metro, the boulevard de la Chapelle is home to a colorful market, where Africans in boubous, dazed night-owls and Arabs in burnous rub shoulders with mothers and their young children looking for a watch, a headscarf or fruit and vegetables. Wed: 7am-2.30pm. Sat: 7am-3pm.







Windmills of the past
While the Moulin Rouge is only there for decoration, of the fifteen windmills that used to dot Montmartre, only two now remain – the Moulin de la Galette and the Moulin Radet. Their grinding stones ground grain, plaster of Paris and grapes from the Montmartre vineyard, of which a few slopes remain.