Hello and bonjour!
It is 15th June 2020, and I’ve come to Montmartre
to climb the highest point in Paris.
Now most normal people come here and just go straight up the staircase,
and of course we’re not going to do anything like that.
Instead we’re going to go on a very wiggly route
down a whole bunch of random side streets
and we’ll see if we can find some things that you might not have seen before.
Welcome to the secrets of Montmartre.
We’re starting just outside the Moulin Rouge, at the bottom of the hill, on the Boulevard de Clichy.
You can find all kinds of secrets around here,
but then this would be a very different video,
so instead we’re going up the hill on Rue Lepic.
Btw, the Moulin Rouge translates into English as the Red Windmill,
and there’s going to be few windmills in this video,
so see how many you can spot.
Unfortunately for can-can fans,
the cabaret that famously never closes
is currently closed.
But remember you’re in France,
so if you want glitz, glamour, and a dazzling display of neon,
you can always go to a pharmacy instead.
Now here’s a place you might recognise
even if you’ve only ever watched one French film in your life –
it's the Café des Deux Moulins from Amélie.
It’s usually full of tourists,
but as I’m filming this France has only just reopened its borders,
so I guess they haven’t had time to get here yet.
Further uphill on Rue des Trois-Frères
you can also visit the grocery store from the film,
where they sell real-life fruit and veg
and cheesy souvenirs of course.
And if Amélie isn’t enough to put you in a romantic mood,
then hidden in a park just around the corner is the mur des je t’aime
– the wall of I love yous.
It was installed here in 2000 and features the phrase “I love you” in over 300 languages.
It’s the perfect backdrop for a photo with a loved one,
before some annoying pedant tells you that actually
the red dots symbolise a broken heart.
But while you’re here don’t miss the metro entrance at Abbesses –
it’s one of only 2 stations that still have one of these original glass canopies from
the 1900s.
This building on Avenue Junot looks like it might have stolen one of the other ones,
but it stands just opposite one of Montmartre’s best-kept secrets:
a ridiculously picturesque street called Villa Léandre
which is a dead end so you’d never go down here unless you knew about it.
Very few Parisians have their own front gardens
but the street was designed specifically to have "ze English look."
So I shaved my head, drank a few lagers, and started shouting at foreigners.
And speaking of alcohol,
a little further along you’ll find the Vigne du Clos Montmartre,
one of 10 tiny vineyards that are dotted around the capital.
There have been vineyards on the hill of Montmartre for over 1000 years
and while this particular one only dates back to the 1930s
it carries on a proud tradition and produces up to 1000 bottles of extremely exclusive
wine every year.
Another traditional aspect of Montmartre is its windmills.
The Moulin du Radet was built in 1717,
back when this was all fields (and vineyards),
and is now a restaurant,
while the Moulin Blute-Fin is even older,
constructed in 1622, and is still functional.
There used to be more, but today, only these two survive.
And yes,
Amélie’s café is named after them.
Next up is the beautiful Place Dalida,
one of the 12% of public places in Paris named after a woman.
Dalida was a French singer born in Egypt to Italian parents,
and is one of the most successful recording artists in history –
selling more than 170 million albums.
That’s more than Abba!
She is, of course, almost completely unknown in the English-speaking world.
We’re not far from the top of the hill now
and as we pass Montmartre’s unusual water tower,
built in 1927 to match the style of the Sacré-Coeur,
we are approaching Tourist Central,
otherwise known as the Place du Tertre.
There aren’t too many secrets left around here,
but every restaurant has a story,
and this one claims to be birthplace of the word "bistro".
The story goes that towards the end of the Napoleonic wars,
Cossack troops invaded Paris’s bars and restaurants and would shout “bistro bistro”
which is the Russian for “quickly quickly”.
And eventually the word was adopted by the French
to mean a restaurant with simple food that could be served quickly.
So essentially fast food was invented in France by some impatient Russians.
Anyway we are obviously not going to end this video
without climbing the absolute summit of the hill,
and as we all know, at the very top of Montmartre is a church called…
Saint-Pierre?
Er, yeah,
while the Sacré Coeur basilica takes all the glory,
this little church next door
sits on the highest natural point in the whole of Paris.
There’s even a marker on the wall,
which used to contain a disc showing the exact altitude in metres
but it seems someone decided that would make a nice souvenir.
Now if you really want to do it properly,
the cemetery is apparently one centimetre higher than the courtyard,
but it’s behind a door that only opens 1 day a year.
And although I could wait here until November,
I don’t want anyone to think I’m weird,
so instead I’m just going to take a photo of myself posing happily
next to a vandalised altitude marker.
If you’d like to visit Montmartre when travelling is a thing again,
it’s easily reachable on the metro and bus system,
and if you have any accessibility issues
or you just don’t want to walk,
there’s a funicular which will take you to the top.
The area is full of other quirks
like this vintage photobooth,
the famous sinking building of Rue Lamarck,
and this statue that’s half way through a wall for some reason.
If you know any other secrets that I’ve missed out,
please do put them in the comments,
but for now I’m going to be a total tourist
and go and enjoy the view.
Thanks for watching and I will see you soon.