Montmartre Highlights Small-Group Walking Tour with Local Guide Paris

Place Saint-Pierre and the Sacré-Cœur

The walk begins at Place Saint-Pierre, the square at the foot of the terraced gardens that climb to the Sacré-Cœur, beside the old carousel. From here the white basilica fills the view above you: built between 1875 and 1914 in a Romano-Byzantine style on the highest point in Paris, about 130 metres above the Seine, it is faced in a stone that releases a white mineral in rain, which is why it stays bright. The dome gives the widest view over Paris, and the guide explains how the hill went from quarry village to artists' colony.

How to get to Montmartre: Anvers on metro line 2 is a three-minute walk from Place Saint-Pierre, and Abbesses on line 12 is a little higher up; the funicular beside the gardens takes you to the basilica steps. The tour ends close to the basilica, so the tips the guide gives for visiting the Sacré-Cœur, where entry to the church is free and the dome climb is ticketed, are easy to use straight away.

The Wall of Love at Abbesses

A short walk from the start, in the small Square Jehan-Rictus beside Abbesses metro station, stands the Wall of Love, a mural of dark enamel tiles on which the words 'I love you' are written in some 250 languages, with splashes of red representing the pieces of a broken heart. Created in 2000, it has become one of the most photographed corners of Montmartre, and the guide helps you find your own language on the wall; Arabic is there too.

The square sits on Place des Abbesses, named after the abbesses of the medieval convent that owned the hill, with its art-nouveau metro entrance, one of the few original glass-canopied entrances still in place. The guide spends about half an hour here and on the surrounding streets, with the first of the family pictures taken in front of the wall before the climb into the village.

The Bateau-Lavoir and the artists' village

Up the steps on the leafy Place Émile-Goudeau stands the Bateau-Lavoir, a ramshackle wooden building of studios where, in the first years of the 20th century, young painters and poets lived with almost no money and invented modern art; its name comes from the way it creaked like a laundry boat on the Seine. The original burned in 1970 and was rebuilt, but the square, the fountain and the view down the hill are unchanged, and the guide tells how the artists shaped Montmartre and how Montmartre shaped them.

This stop is the heart of the Montmartre walking tour: the stories of the painters, the cheap rents that drew them, the dance halls and the windmills that gave the village its character. Allow about half an hour here and on the lanes around Rue Ravignan and Rue d'Orchampt, which are among the quietest streets on the hill.

The Moulin de la Galette and the Maison Rose

Montmartre once had dozens of windmills grinding flour for the city's bakers; the Moulin de la Galette on Rue Lepic is the best known of the survivors. It took its name from the brown-flour cakes, galettes, that the millers sold with the dancing on Sunday afternoons, a scene immortalised by the Impressionist painters. Today the windmill stands above a restaurant, and the guide uses the photo stop to explain how the hill looked when it was still a village outside Paris.

A few minutes on, at the corner of Rue de l'Abreuvoir and Rue des Saules, is the Maison Rose, the small pink house with green shutters that has become one of the most photographed buildings in Paris. The street beside it, with the dome of the basilica rising at the end, is the picture-postcard view of Montmartre, and the guide calls a short break here so everyone gets their photo without rushing.

The vineyard, the courtyards and the hidden passages

Just below the Maison Rose, on the northern slope of the hill, lies the Clos Montmartre, a small vineyard planted in 1933 to save the land from developers; its harvest each October is the excuse for the village's biggest street festival. Opposite stand an old shuttered cottage and the Saint-Vincent cemetery, and the lanes here, Rue Saint-Vincent and Rue Cortot, are where the walk leaves the crowds behind.

The guide takes you through quiet courtyards, past the house that is now the Montmartre museum with its gardens, and along passages that most visitors never find, with stories of the resistance, the revolutionaries and the eccentrics who lived on the hill. Is Montmartre worth visiting with a guide? This is the part that answers the question: without one, these corners are almost impossible to find.

Place du Tertre, the painters' square

The walk ends at Place du Tertre, the old village square at the top of the hill, where painters and portrait artists set up their easels in the open air every day as they have for more than a century. The square is lined with 18th-century houses and the oldest restaurant on the hill, and the church of Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre beside it, consecrated in 1147, is among the oldest churches in Paris, older by centuries than the basilica next door.

The guide gives you about fifteen minutes here for a final photo and, if you like, a portrait, then points you to the Sacré-Cœur, two minutes away, with advice on the best time to visit: late afternoon, when the tour ends, is ideal, as the basilica stays open into the evening and the terrace in front gives the sunset view over the whole city.