Walking Tour: Ghosts of Montmartre

There was another walking tour on Friday afternoon, this time at Montmartre (which is right by the Moulin Rouge and Sacre Coeur).

First stop: Montmartre Cemetery.

Among the famous people buried here: The man who invented the sax, the woman who is painted in the famous Moulin Rouge poster, Alexandre Dumas's son, the man who beheaded Marie Antoinette, among others.  Interesting fact: every couple of years, you have to pay to keep your ancestors plot, since space is in such high demand.  If you don't have the money, the body is dug up and moved somewhere else so that someone else can take over that plot.

There is a volunteer group in Paris that goes around Parisian cemeteries and restores neglected graves.  They were working on this grave when we visited.

The cafe that Amelie worked in (from the movie, Amelie).

Once the home of Vincent Van Gogh.

Not sure if you can see it too well, but there is an amazing view of Paris at the end of the street.

This building, Le Bateau-Lavoir, used to be really cheap housing, which means that a lot of artists lived there, including Picasso.  Apparently the housing was so terrible that there were holes in the floor allowing you to see into the apartment above/below you and water would freeze because of the cold.

The market that was featured in Amelie.

These Wallace Fountains, a gift from Richard Wallace, used to be found all over Paris.  They are public drinking fountains (that you can still drink from today) but the Nazis melted a lot of them for firearms.  Later, the city replaced a lot of the destroyed one, but there's one difference between the old and the new: the old ones had rings on the sides to which a cup would be chained for people to drink out of, while the new ones are ringless.  You can't really tell, but the one in the picture below is not an original. 

This garden is an homage to when nuns used to live on Montmartre and contains the plants and herbs that nuns and monks would plant in their gardens for medicinal purposes.  Sometimes it's open to the public, but not when I was there.  Also, attached to this garden is the I Love You wall, where "I love you" is written in 311 languages.