Even the quartier's early history is otherworldly and miraculous: "Montmartre" refers, either to the Temple to Mars that was there in Roman times, or to Saint-Denis, an early Christian martyr ("martre") who was beheaded as punishment for his faith and, the legend goes, picked up his head and walked to his final resting place. When it was incorporated into Paris in the 1860's, Montmartre continued to cause a stir. In 1871, for example, a number of the neighborhood's radical inhabitants refused to turn in the guns and cannon that were kept in an arsenal there, thus starting the Paris Commune. From the 1880s to the 1920s Van Gogh, Renoir, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Valadon, Utrillo, and Modigliani are just a few of the creative minds that lived and worked here and lost their heads -- figuratively speaking, this time -- as they took in the beautiful, sloping landscape, and drank glass after glass of absinthe in cafés perched on the sides of the hill.

There's a lot to see in Montmartre. Most tourists begin at the top, with the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur. While the church's Romano-Byzantine style makes it look like something exotic and old, it was actually built in 1871, and completed during World War I, and is a sort of embodiment of what life in Montmartre during the Belle-Epoque was all about: decadence (the basilica is one of the city's largest churches), innovation (the very ground of Montmartre's hollow hill had to be reinforced to support the building), and, of course, art. Speaking of art, the nearby Place du Tertre, a small square packed with amateur painters trying to sell their wares, is another notorious tourist site, just around the corner from the Espace Salvador Dali, a museum/gallery devoted to the Surrealist. Along the cobbled streets of Montmartre, one finds charming houses and cottages (like The Musee de Montmartre, for example, or Tristan Tzara's Art Deco former home) in a variety of architectural styles that are somehow all pleasing to the eye. Down the steep rue des Saules is Montmartre's small vineyard and the world-famous Lapin Agile, where the area's artists hung out, ate cheap food, and sang along to chansons, a century ago.

These artists have left their marks on countless places on the Butte (hill). Off the slanting cobbles of the Place Emile Goudeau is the location of the former Bateau Lavoir, an enormous rundown tannery that was rented out as artists' studios in the early 1900's. Here, Picasso created his masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Further down, on one end of the long, winding rue Lepic, is the building (#54) where Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo, in the late 1880's. At the pretty Place des Abbesses, the Métro station is crowned by one of the two remaining awnings originally designed by Guimard. The streets around here are filled with cafés, bookstores, and shops full of unique clothing and decorative items designed by the area's young artists. With so much to see, one might get tired, so why not stop for a crème brûlée at Les Deux Moulins, the café where the hit 2001 film Amélie's titular heroine worked? It just goes to show that even a place to get a coffee can be transformed by the magic and inspiration that radiate from this unforgettable quartier.