Paris - Place du Tertre - 18e

Plate XCI – Place du Tertre …

I confess I had no idea what a tertre was, or why one should have its own Place. So I looked it up. Well, a tertre is hillock, a heap or a mound. Now Montmartre is more correctly named Butte Montmartre and so I looked up precisely what my old school dictionary has to say about about a butte. You guessed then? A butte too is defined as a mound, knoll or hillock (or the butts behind a target on a shooting range). That’s it then - no more mystery - this simply is the square of the hillock or the Butte Montmartre. It certainly is the centre of life in this district, lying a few short streets away from the Basilica of Sacre Coeur and within shouting distance of the Lapin Agile. Surrounded by relaxed colourful and delightfully lively eateries (or drinkeries depending on your choice of refreshment) it is here that the artists of the area set up their easels daily to paint your portrait or their beloved city sights, and to sell their wares. It is here that you may have your profile cut out by a silhouette-caricaturist if you stand stationery for more than a few seconds. The art work varies from good quality works in oil (and priced accordingly) to the churned out commercial stuff that looks like a million mass-printed table place mats that have already familiarised you with the city scenes in the souvenir shops in the city centre. I never did work out how negotiable the artists’ prices are, but I do suspect that the one who implied I’d grossly insulted him (and his entire ancestry) by trying to negotiate his asking price down, was simply using that as his negotiation strategy to see who blinked first. If so it cost him the sale, and as you will have seen I have more ‘paintings’ of the city today than I’d ever imagined possible!! If the Basilica is the Sacre Coeur de Paris, the Place du Tertre is unquestionably the Coeur de Montmartre. No visit to Paris is complete until I’ve had  ‘des verres de rouge’ here. A votre santé!

When you have finished at the Place du Tetre be sure to visit the nearby l’Espace Salvador Dali, a museum mostly dedicated mainly to the work of the Spanish surrealist.

Paris - Boulevard Clichy - 18e

Plate LXXXVI - Boulevard de Clichy …

If you’re not here on ‘business’, the safest way for the curious, pedestrian tourist to walk along Boulevard de Clichy is to take the middle island in preference to the side pavements. Of course if you are there on business, and knowing the emporia of the area include such names as Love Theatre, Pigalle’s Peep Show or simply Sex Shop, you probably won’t want to do this. This is the red-light district of Paris so you then also won’t mind the continuous approaches of the pimps or mecs who ply their trade along the Boulevard - seemingly for twenty four hours a day. It started off as entertaining, but the persistence of some can start to seem annoying and then even threatening; but it does seem an unwritten code that they, with their promises of showing you a very good time, do not bother strollers taking that sacred middle ground. Of course this choice of path precludes any ‘window shopping’, and the often fading pictures of some of the performances on offer promise delivery of exactly what you’d go shopping for along certain stretches of the Boulevard. Nudge, nudge – wink, wink!

Such was my introduction to what I venture is the essential Paris - Pigalle and Montmartre. If anyone with only an hour in the city asked me where they simply had to go, this would be it. Forget the Louvre (it needs days) or the Eiffel Tower (you’ll see it from here anyway) and you’ll almost certainly pass the Arc de Triomphe en route. Montmartre is the Paris of Piaf, Degas, Lautrec, Renoir, Utrillo, Daumier, van Gogh, and Picasso, the Moulin Rouge, Au Lapin Agile and many cabarets, the Sacré Coeur and the Place du Tertre.

And of sex.