by Roumyana Demireva

Created on: March 24, 2008

Montmartre was and still is today one of the most curious and picturesque quarters of Paris. It is one of the places where the tourists are attracted by the majestical Sacre-Ceur and at the same time by the "Red Windmill" Moulin Rouge.

Montmartre stands on a limestone hill 425 feet high where, according to the legend, St. Denis, the first bishop of Paris, was decapitated in 272. Some people believe that the area`s name derives from this fact: originally called "Mons Martyrum" which means Mount of the Martyrs. It later acquired its present form. During the nineteenth century, this was the mecca of all those artists who believed that the Bohemian life meant living freely, making one`s art the main reason for living and rejecting any attempt from without to impose a way of life. Every painter, from the most famous to the most humble, has left a trace of his life and art at Monmartre.

At the foot of the hill (the "butte Montmartre"), is Place Blanche, dominated by the long blades of the windmill of the Moulin Rouge ("Red Mill"), founded in 1889, where the artists Valentin le Desosse, jane Avril and La Goulue performed. This cabaret, on whose stage the "can-can" was born, is linked to the memory of the painter Toulose-Lautrec, who passed his nights here setting down with his brush the most curious and picturesque details and the truest and most humane images of the night life of the cabarets and theaters, and the whole Paris, as well. Here those personages who lived for art, but were exluded from the art blessed by official recognition, finally found their place. Depicted on a grand scale in the posters of Toulouse-Lautrec, they achieved a renown which they had never had on the boards of the Moulin-Rouge. Other famous painters who are linked to Montmartre are Pissarro, Steinlen, Van Gogh, Modigliani, Picasso.

Today one can see lots of young painters sitting in different places on Montmartre and painting their paintings that, who knows, after a couple of years, could be world famous.
The atmosphere on the hill Montmartre is so charmful that it is a must visit for every tourist.

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