Montmartre Guided Walking Tour in English Paris

Place Blanche and the Moulin Rouge

The walk begins at Place Blanche, named after the white gypsum dust that once covered the square when carts came down from the quarries of the hill. Montmartre's plaster was so famous that the saying went that there was more of Montmartre in Paris than of Paris in Montmartre, because the city's walls were built from it. On the north side of the square stands the Moulin Rouge, the cabaret opened in 1889 whose red windmill on the roof became the emblem of the Paris of the Belle Époque, when the dance halls of the boulevard drew the whole city up to the foot of the hill.

The guide meets you outside the Blanche metro exit on line 2, in a pink vest, and spends about ten minutes here explaining how the windmill became a cabaret and how the artists who painted its dancers lived a few streets uphill. From here the Montmartre tour leaves the boulevard and heads up Rue Lepic, away from the traffic.

Rue Lepic and the Moulin de la Galette

Rue Lepic winds up the hill from Place Blanche, past food shops and the house where one of the most famous painters of the 19th century lived with his brother, to the Moulin de la Galette, the last of the windmills that once ground flour and pressed gypsum on the hill. Two mills survive, the Blute-Fin of the 17th century and the Radet, moved to the corner of Rue Girardon in the 1920s. In the 19th century the millers turned their land into an open-air dance hall serving galettes, the flat rolls that gave the mill its name, and the Sunday dances became the subject of one of the best-known Impressionist paintings in the world.

The mill is private today and seen from the street, which takes about ten minutes. Just beyond it the lane opens onto a quiet square with a bronze figure passing through a wall, one of the hidden corners the guide likes to show, before the climb continues to the top of the hill.

Place du Tertre and the painters' village

Place du Tertre is the heart of old Montmartre: a small tree-shaded square that was the village green when Montmartre was an independent commune outside the city walls, annexed by Paris only in 1860. Today it is filled with easels, and the licensed artists who work here draw portraits and paint the views, a tradition that goes back to the cheap rents that brought painters up the hill in the 1880s. Around the square stand the oldest houses of the village and the church of Saint-Pierre, one of the oldest churches in Paris, consecrated in 1147.

Place du Tertre is busy by midday, so the guide approaches it through the side streets and explains how to look at the square without being drawn into the tourist traps, about ten minutes in all. From here it is a short walk to the north side of the hill, where the crowds thin and the village feel returns in the Rue Saint-Rustique and the cottages of Rue Cortot.

The Clos Montmartre vineyard and the Rue Saint-Vincent

On the north slope of the hill, where few visitors go, a small vineyard climbs the corner of Rue des Saules and Rue Saint-Vincent. The Clos Montmartre was planted in 1933 to save the plot from building, reviving the vines that had covered the hill in the Middle Ages, and it is the only working vineyard inside Paris. Its harvest every October is celebrated with a village festival of parades and music, and the gates are opened to visitors. Opposite stands a pink cottage with green shutters, the oldest cabaret on the hill, once nicknamed the cabaret of the assassins, where painters and poets gathered at the start of the 20th century.

The guide stops here for about ten minutes to tell the story of the vineyard and the cabaret, then leads you through the Rue Saint-Vincent and the stairways and gardens of the north side. This is the village of Montmartre that the postcards miss: cottages, ivy, cats and the sound of the basilica's bells above.

The Sacré-Cœur basilica and the view over Paris

The walk ends at the Sacré-Cœur, the white basilica on the summit of the hill, 130 metres above the Seine. It was begun in 1875 as an act of national penance after the war and the uprising of 1871, and finished in 1914, consecrated in 1919. Its Romano-Byzantine domes are built of a travertine stone that releases a white mineral in the rain, so the basilica grows whiter as it ages. Many of the hill's residents resented it as a monument to the defeat of their revolt, and the guide explains why some locals still feel that way.

From the steps in front of the basilica the view takes in the whole of Paris, and the guide ends the tour here after about ten minutes with tips on what to see next. Entry to the basilica is free during opening hours; the climb to the dome is a separate ticket. The funicular and the Anvers metro station on line 2 are a few minutes below.