Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
of your choice while chatting to bar-hostesses who will quickly and repeatedly
quaff drinks of theirs, and promise more than is usually delivered (indeed you
would find the bill for their “champagne” rather high). There were road works in
the boulevard in 2004 that rendered unproductive my search for the other medallion
located at this point.
Above the Bvd de Clichy rises the hill of the Butte de Montmartre. The Rue
Lepic winds up its steep sides, leading to the crowded streets around the Place du
Tertre. Here artists purvey to the tourists daubed pictures of Montmartre of dubious
merit, although they serve well enough as souvenirs. The sex industry and the tourist
industry are all mixed up in Montmartre with a multilingual, lively community of
long-term residents and transient students as well as hangers-on. The Rue Lepic
changes in character quickly, as it rises from Blvd de Clichy, from touristy to
village-like. In its mid section it is lined with butchers, bakers, pharmacies, grocers,
newsagents, restaurants, and all the small businesses typical of a French neighborhood,
including the bar which was the principal location for the French film
Amélie
. Half
way along Rue Lepic, the Rue des Abbesses leads back towards the meridian to the
Place des Abbesses, where there is an original art nouveau frontage to the Abbesses
Métro station by architect Hector Guimard.
Children play here in the evening, perhaps treated to a ride on the merry-go-round
while their minders wait for their parents to come home from work. This attractive
ambience stems from the nineteenth century concentration of artists in Montmartre
and the bohemian life they brought to the area including Corot, Gericault, Renoir,
Degas, Cezanne, Braque, and Picasso. The archetypical images of Montmartre
from this epoch are those by Toulouse Lautrec of the Moulin Rouge cabaret and its
flamboyant dance, the can-can.
Moulin Rouge
is a red windmill, once real and
presently a design of neon lights. The cabaret at the Moulin Rouge is now a rather
high-priced theater show pitched to rich, international tourists who sip their com-
pulsory drink at little tables and watch the brightly- (but sparsely-) costumed
show-girls, and magicians, jugglers, and other variety acts whose appreciation
needs knowledge of no particular language.
Back along the Rue des Abbesses and along the Rue de Maistre is Monmartre
Cemetery where Léon Foucault is buried, his grave marked by a pillar recording
some of his significant discoveries: the photoelectric microscope, his pendulum, a
gyroscope, a telescope, and regulators. Other graves in the crowded but quirky and
whimsical cemetery are of the scientist Ampère, the novelist Stendahl, the com-
poser Berlioz, the painter Degas, and the film director Truffaut, as well as a tomb
with a gold saxophone; the grave of Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the instrument.
The cemetery was founded here outside the city for health reasons. In the seven-
teenth, eighteenth centuries, and even into the nineteenth century, Montmartre was
an isolated village on a hill to the north of Paris. Because of its elevation, a number
(up to 30) of windmills were built there but now few survive, and most of the wind-
mills seen there today are pictorial or ornamental replicas. The Moulin de la Galette
is the oldest windmill in Montmartre and two of them exist. One is at the corner of
the Rue Lepic and Rue Giradon. It is small, below the top of the hill out of the wind,
and anyway it is a restaurant, therefore it cannot be the real Moulin de la Galette.
