Tourist attractions in Paris : Montmartre

Montmartre is a hill in the north of Paris. It is 130 meters high and gives its name to the surrounding district, in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank (La Rive Droite), the northern bank of the river Seine . The word Montmartre is translated to mean "mountain of the martyr". It owes this name to the martyrdom of Saint Denis,who was decapitated on the hill around 250 AD. Saint Denis was the Bishop of Paris and is a patron saint of France.

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Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district. The other, older, church on the hill is Saint Pierre de Montmartre, which claims to be the location at which the Jesuit order of priests was founded. Many artists had studios or worked around the community of Montmartre such as Salvador Dalí, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh. 

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During 1590 Siege of Paris, part of the French Wars of Religion, the hills at Montmartre were used by Henry IV to place his artillery where they could fire down into the city. The siege eventually failed when a large relief force approached and forced Henry to withdraw. Russians occupied Montmartre when invading Paris in the course of the Battle of Paris (1814). They used the altitude of the hill for artillery bombardment of the city.

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Since Montmartre was outside the city limits, free of Paris taxes and no doubt also due to the fact that the local nuns made wine, the hill quickly became a popular drinking area. The area developed into a centre of free-wheeling and decadent entertainment at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In the popular cabaret the Moulin Rouge, and at Le Chat Noir, artists, singers and performers regularly appeared .

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The Basilica of the Sacré Cœur was built on Montmartre from 1876 to 1912 by public subscription as a gesture of expiation of the "crimes of the communards", after the Paris Commune events, and to honour the French victims of the 1871 Franco-Prussian War. Its white dome is a highly visible landmark in the city. Only a few streets away from  the Sacré Cœur and the Lapin Agile, it is the heart of the city's elevated Montmartre quarter. With its many artists setting up their easels each day for the tourists, the Place du Tertre is a reminder of the time when Montmartre was the mecca of modern art. Montmartre is an officially designated historic district with limited development allowed in order to maintain its historic character.


Text Source : wikipedia.org