In the second portrait of his series Great Parisian Neighborhoods,
award-winning raconteur John Baxter leads us on a whirlwind tour of
Montmartre, the hill-top village that fired the greatest achievements of
modern art while also provoking bloody revolution and the sexual
misbehavior that made Paris synonymous with sin
High on the northern edge of Paris, Montmartre has always attracted
bohemians, political radicals, the searchers for artistic inspiration as
well as those hungry for pleasure. In its winding, windmill-shadowed
streets, which, only fifty years before, saw the anarchist rising of the
Commune, Renoir, Picasso and van Gogh seized a similar freedom to remake
painting, while, in the tenderloin of Pigalle, Toulouse-Lautrec drew the
cancan dancers of the Moulin Rouge, celebrating a hedonism that
titillated the world,
In Montmartre, bestselling author and IACP Award winner John Baxter
lifts the curtain on a district that visitors to Paris seldom see. From
the tumbledown workshops of the Bateau Lavoir in which Picasso and
Braque created Cubism to Clichy's Cabaret of Nothingness where guests
dined at coffins under lamps of human bones, the whole of this
mysterious enclave is ours to explore.
For visitors and armchair travelers alike, Montmartre captures the
excitement and scandal of a fascinating quarter that condenses the
elusive perfumes, colors and songs of Paris.