Montmartre

 May 5, 2025

We haven’t done any serious walking since my ankle injury but I’ve been doing so well, we decided to go to Montmartre as we haven’t been there in quite a while.  There’s a French woman whose podcasts I listen to and she does audio tours.  We opted in and off we went.  The tour was great- with geolocation she led us through parts of Montmartre we’d never visited and gave us lots of history along the way.  The area actually seemed charming rather than just overrun with tourists. (It’s called VoiceMap if anyone’s interested.) It was such a beautiful day I’ll have trouble not adding too many pictures today.

The Montmartre métro stop is one of the originals, designed for the 1900 World Fair in Paris and has the original glass roof.

Loved these sign outside of wine vendor.

My favorite weapon is the corkscrew

This is the Bateau-Lavoir which was at one time the studio/living space for several famous artists including Picasso, Modigliani and Renoir.

It’s in this lovely square:

At one time there were 30 windmills in Montmartre but only two remain with this one having been painted by Van Gogh.

This fictional character was able to walk through walks to drive his boss crazy, rob banks, escape prison etc. until the day he couldn’t.  And he here remains:

This is St. Denis, the first bishop of Paris who died here in 272.  The local druids were not so fond of him and decapitated him.  He continued preaching while holding his head in his hands, walking some 6 km before he collapsed.

We headed up the road - so charming.

    I’d never before seen the vineyard on Montmartre. According to our audio guide, it’s expensive and not great wine but has become a collectors item due to the annual changing of its label.

The back side of Sacré Coeur.

And the interior..

My ankle had had it by this time so we took the funicular down the hill and happily found that our métro passes worked for the funicular too.  We logged some 4 miles and 12 flights of stairs.