Montparnasse

Montparnasse was the center of the artistic and literary world from 1890 to 1930 but also “a weird little land crowded with alcoholics, prostitutes, pimps, poseurs, college students, slummers, beggars, drug addicts, thieves, political refugees, anarchists as well as men and women without a country. A land filled with gaiety sometimes real and often feigned”, recalled Samuel Putman, a writer who lived in Paris at that time.

Today, its memorable past cannot really be unveiled by the lone visitor.

Unless you’ve done your own research and you are a skillful treasure hunter, this is the area of Paris where you need an interpreter, someone to guide your steps through those silent streets, (both sides of the Boulevard Montparnasse) to see the homes, studios and apartments where Man Ray, Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Foujita, Max Ernst, Kandinsky, Kisling, Pascin, Gauguin, Soutine, Modigliani and many others lived, met, fell in love, experienced life, became famous and even died.

The mythical brasseries of La Coupole, La Closerie de Lilas, Le Café du Dôme and La Rotonde were meeting places and second homes for all these penniless artists at the time. They are still there and well worth the detour.