Notes on Montmartre , Orsay.

Montmartre means 'mountain of the martyr', and it owes its name to the martydom of Saint Denis, who was decapitated on the hill in around 250AD. Saint Denis was the Bishop of Paris and is the patron saint of France.

The hill's religious symbolism is thought to be even older, as it has been suggested as a likely druidic holy place because it is the highest point in the area.

In the mid-1800s artists, such as Johan Jongkind and Camille Pissarro, came to inhabit Montmartre. By the end of the century, Montmartre and its counterpart on the Left Bank, Montparnasse, became the principal artistic centers of Paris. Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and other impoverished artists lived and worked in a commune, a building called Le Bateau-Lavoir during the years 1904–1909.

A building on the Place Emile Goudeau, where artists had their studios, was called the Bateau Lavoir. The premises were so named by the poet Max Jacob, because the wooden structure resembled the laundry boats on the river Seine.

The mill called the 'Blute-fin', better known as the Moulin de la Galette, originally served as a windmill, along with 30 other mills formerly situated on the summit of the hill. The mill was run by a farmer of the name Debray, a generous friend to artists, who held festivities there. Feasts were, on more than one occasion, organized by his friend, the draughtsman Francisque Poulbot. The windmills were originally used for the grinding of corn and crushing of grapes. When the Moulin was transformed into a dance hall, it became a place of entertainment for the painters. The mill at the Rue Lepic was immortalized by Renoir, Lautrec and Van Gogh.

The entrance to the Metro ABBESSES in the Art Nouveau style, was decorated by Hector Guimard in 1900. The station itself lies 30 meters below street level and can be reached by an elevator.

It is said that the name 'Montmartre' derives from Mons Martyrium meaning the hill of the martyrs. Legend has it that the three saints Denis, Rustique and Eleuthère, were sentenced to death in 272 by the Roman emperor Auretianus. Before being decapitated by their executioners near the temple of Mercury, Saint Denis, the first bishop of Paris, Saint Rustique, arch-priest, and Saint Eleuthère, archdeacon, were tortured on the Ile de la Cité. When they arrived at the foot of the 'Mons Mercurii', approximately near the Rue des Abbesses, the three saints were beheaded. According to the abbot Hilduin (9th century), Saint Denis picked up

his head, washed away the blood and walked uphill in northern direction till the place where later the cathedral of Saint Denis would be built.

The mills of Montmartre are as famous as Montmartre itself and date back to the 17th century. One of them, the 'Blute-fin' belonged to the Debray family since 1640.

When the cossacks invaded Montmartre in 1814, the miller defended his mill against the Russians as best as he could. Unfortunately he was seized by the cossacks and crucified to the wings of his own mill. Despite these tragic memories, the descendants of the miller changed the centuries-old mill into a dancing place, a garden that were to be the most delightful and famous place in Paris at the time. Since the owners were famous for their pancakes known as 'galettes', a new name for the mill was soon found: Moulin de la Galette. The 'Moulin de la Galette' was a meeting place where the atmosphere resembled that of a happy village square. At this open air dancing place, at the very top of the Butte, the dancer 'La Goulue' made her debut. Thanks to painters like Renoir, Toulouse Lautrec and Van Gogh, the mill was immortalized.

The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris on the left bank of the Seine near Musée d'Orsay RER line C station. It holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume up to 1986. The Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume is a museum of contemporary art in the north-west corner of the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. The building was built in 1861 during the reign of Napoleon III. It originally housed tennis courts; the name is from the precursor of tennis, the jeu de paume. It was used from 1940 to 1944 to store Jewish cultural property looted by the Nazi regime in France. Before 1986, it contained the Musée du Jeu de Paume, which held many important impressionist works now in the Musée d'Orsay.

In order to appreciate the Tuilerie gardens you must sit quietly and see the invisible. Imagine a large, rather cumbersome palace that resembled the Louvre and formed the eastern edge of the side of the garden. It was built by Catherine de Medicis, an incredibly powerful and supersitious queen whose actions were determined by her soothsayer long before Nancy Reagan had the idea. Her stay at the palace was abruptly interrupted when she learned that she would die near Saint-Germain. Since the Tuileries Palace was in the parish of the church Saint-Germain-Auxerrois, Catherine packed her bags, took her furniture and left. As history tells us, years later, on her deathbed at the royal chateau of Blois she received the last rites from Father Julien de Saint-Germain!

The Tuileries Palace can be seen in a map of 1870. It encloses the western side of the present day Louvre, connecting the Denon and Richelieu wings.

The great Louis XIV resided at the Tuileries Palace while his chateau, Versailles, was under construction. When he left, the building was abandoned, used only as a theater, until the return of the ill-fated royal family - Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, their children plus a handful of servants, who were expelled from Versailles and forced to enjoy the hospitality of the mob of Paris in October of 1789, two months after the storming of the Bastille. What a fall from glory to leave the palatial spendor of Versailles, for the musty, cavernous halls of the Tuileries Palace. I can see the queen playing in the garden with her children, exposed to the stares of the people, like animals in a zoo, or the well-worn paths taken by the king, as he meditated on philosophy and history in denial of the danger and inevitabily of the demise of the monarchy which would take place two years later with his execution on 21 January, 1793.

The royal family attempted escape. They slipped out of the palace, disguised as servants, praying for release from this capitivity, only to be captured in Varennes, a town on the border of Germany, recognized by a peasant from the resemblence of Louis to his coin! They were dragged back to the Tuileries, now under strict guard. The palace and the gardens were to be their universe until the most dramatic day of the French revolution - August 10, 1792 when the bells of Paris rang in every working class neighborhood and the people stormed the palace in anger. The royal family fled to the General Assembly hall near the Place de la Concorde. The faithful Swiss guards, loyal to the end, defended the palace, unaware that their royal charges had deserted the building. The rabble stormed the doors, massacred the guards, looted the palace and left. The palace and once quiet garden were strewn with over 1000 corpses. The King himself could not stop the slaughter as he cowered with his family in a room of the assembly.

This revolt confirmed in the insurgents' mind the justification for dismantling the monarchy and establishing the "Commune", the first government of the people. It is not in the fall of the Bastille but in the slaughter in the Tuileries that the French Revolution made its mark! The Tuileries Palace had seemed hexed. Catherine de Medicis abandoned it, Louis XIV tolerated it, Louis XVI was prisoner, ....and in 1848 during a revolt, the people of Paris sacked it; it was restored under Napoleon-III to a sumptuous palace only to be burned in the 1871 during the confrontation with another Communard government. The accursed palace loomed, charred and in disgrace for 12 years on the site of the present expanded Tuileries gardens.

Place de la Concorde- Creation- In 1763, a large statue of king Louis XV was erected at the site to celebrate the recovery of the king after a serious illness. The square surrounding the statue was created later, in 1772, by the architect Jacques-Ange Gabriel. It was known as the place Louis XV

Guillotine- In 1792, during the French revolution, the statue was replaced by a another, large statue, called 'Liberté' (freedom) and the square was called place de la Révolution. A guillotine was installed at the center of the square and in a time span of only a couple of years, 1119 people were beheaded here. Amongst them many famous people like King Louis XVI, Marie-Antionette, and revolutionary Robespierre, just to name a few. After the revolution the square was renamed several times until 1830, when it was given the current name 'Place de la Concorde'. Obelisk-In the 19th century the 3200 years old obelisk from the temple of Ramses II at Thebes was installed at the center of the Place de la Concorde. It is a 23 meters tall monolith in pink granite and weighs approximately 230 tons. In 1831, it was offered by the Viceroy of Egypt to Louis Philippe. It was only one of 3 obelisks offered by the Viceroy, but only one was transported to Paris. The obelisk is covered with hieroglyphs picturing the reign of pharaohs Ramses II & Ramses III. Pictures on the pedestal describe the transportation to Paris and its installation at the square in 1836