Montmartre Self-Guided Walking Audio Tour

Montmartre on foot, from Abbesses to the hilltop

10 stops · about 22 min walking · start: Wall of Love (Le Mur des je t'aime) · finish: Square Louise-Michel

The walk begins at the Wall of Love on Place des Abbesses and climbs to the Bateau-Lavoir on Place Émile-Goudeau and on to Place du Tertre, the old village square. Quieter streets lead to Le Passe-Muraille on Place Marcel-Aymé, the bust of Dalida, La Maison Rose at the corner of Rue de l'Abreuvoir and the vineyard on Rue des Saules. The Musée de Montmartre on Rue Cortot comes next, then Sacré-Cœur on the summit, and the terraces of Square Louise-Michel below it are the last stop. Some streets are steep, any stop can be your start in the app, and none charges admission.

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1. 

   1Wall of Love (Le Mur des je t'aime)Start

   Created in 2000 by Frédéric Baron and Claire Kito, this 40-square-metre wall in the Square Jehan-Rictus on Place des Abbesses is covered with 612 enamelled lava tiles. They carry the words I love you 311 times in 250 languages, and the red splashes stand for the pieces of a broken heart.

2. 

   2Le Bateau-Lavoir

   Poor artists lived and worked in this modest building on Place Émile-Goudeau in the early 1900s, and Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon here in 1907. The poet Max Jacob named it after the laundry boats on the Seine; it burned down in 1970 and was rebuilt in 1978.

3. 

   3Place du Tertre

   Montmartre was a separate village until it became part of Paris in 1860, and this square near the top of the hill was its main square. Painters, songwriters and poets gathered here from the late 18th century until the First World War, and artists still set up their easels to paint visitors.

4. 

   4Le Passe-Muraille

   On Place Marcel-Aymé, a man seems to be stuck halfway through a stone wall. The sculpture was made in 1989 by the actor Jean Marais and shows the hero of Marcel Aymé's short story Le Passe-muraille, a modest office clerk who discovers that he can walk through walls.

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5. 

   5Bust of Dalida

   The bronze bust on Place Dalida honours the singer Dalida, who lived in Montmartre and died in 1987. It is the work of the French artist Aslan and was unveiled in April 1997, ten years after her death, on the small square the city had named after her the year before.

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6. 

   6La Maison Rose

   This small pink house with green shutters stands at the corner of Rue de l'Abreuvoir and Rue des Saules. It became famous through the paintings of Maurice Utrillo, who grew up in Montmartre, and in the early 20th century it was turned into a little restaurant by Germaine Pichot, a friend of Picasso and his circle.

7. 

   7Clos Montmartre Vineyard

   The slopes of Montmartre were covered with vines for centuries, and in 1933 local residents replanted this small vineyard on Rue des Saules to save the land. It has more than 1,700 vines of many grape varieties, and since 1934 the harvest has been celebrated every October with the Fête des Vendanges.

8. 

   8Musée de Montmartre

   Founded in 1960, the museum occupies old houses on Rue Cortot. Renoir painted Bal du moulin de la Galette here in 1876, Suzanne Valadon later had her studio here and lived with her son Maurice Utrillo, and the gardens have been recreated after Renoir's paintings.

9. 

   9Sacré-Cœur Basilica

   The white basilica on the summit of Montmartre, the highest point in Paris, was begun in 1875 to designs by Paul Abadie, finished in 1914 and consecrated in 1919. It is built of travertine from Château-Landon, and its great bell, the Savoyarde, weighs almost 19 tonnes.

10. 

    10Square Louise-MichelFinish

    This terraced garden below Sacré-Cœur was created in 1927 and in 2004 was renamed after Louise Michel, the anarchist who took part in the Paris Commune of 1871. From its stairways and paths, with a fountain by Paul Gasq and the funicular running alongside, you look out over the rooftops of Paris.