Montmartre

Thursday 1/15/09

Typical street views:

Montmartre7 Montmartre3

If I had the money, I would love to live in Montmartre. The view as we stepped out of the métro was impressive, of a glistening white monument cresting the imposing hill before us. We climbed the stairs toward the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, surrounded by tourist shops selling scarves and plastic Eiffel Towers. The day was sunny, and the heartening mood of the church above us was met with the festive mood of the musicians and dancers who played on the steps. The inside of the church wasn’t as spectacular as the outside. The colors and shapes of the mural covering the inside of the dome were a bit too bright, too stark. No, the spectacular thing about Sacré-Coeur was the view. You can see everything from there—l’Hôtel des Invalides, l’Arc de Triomphe, le Louvre, even (behind some trees) la Tour Eiffel.

Views of and from Sacré-Coeur:

Montmartre1 Montmartre4

Montmartre was holy before Sacré-Coeur, though, and we visited a small, quiet, cobwebbed little church just behind the newer basilique. It’s surprising how invisible the aging, yellowed building was rendered by the newer one in front of it. The stained glass windows reminded me of cubism in their treatment of the figures. Too much Picasso, perhaps.

Beyond the churches, under a Christmas light sculpture of a painter’s palate, stood a dozen or two artists with some paintings for sale, their canvases stretched before them in anticipation of their next creation. Some of them looked great. Around the hubbub of artistic activity sat quiet little store fronts belonging to boutiques or restaurants, completing the look of a charming village, within easy access of central Paris.

The artists's stands:

Montmartre2

On the other side of this village-within-the-city, we walked past the last two remaining wind mills of an area that was once full of them, past numerous cabarets such as the famous Lapin Agile (a pun on the name of the painter, Gill, whose image of an agile rabbit jumping out of a saucepan still hangs at the front today), past residential areas full of children, schools, and adolescent boys jumping off rails.

K.B.

The Lapin Agile and a Wind Mill:

Montmartre5Montmartre6