Montmartre & Place du Tertre

Before it was a tourist magnet full of portrait artists and crêpe stands, Montmartre was the beating heart of modern art. Picasso, Modigliani, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, and Renoir all lived and worked here, drawn by cheap rent and cheaper wine. The Bateau-Lavoir, a ramshackle wooden building on Rue Ravignan, is where Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907, the painting that blew up 500 years of Western art conventions and launched Cubism.

Montmartre was an independent village until 1860, when Paris annexed it along with several other surrounding communes. The locals weren't thrilled. The hill had its own vineyards, its own windmills, and its own wild reputation — this was where Parisians came to drink tax-free wine (the city tax didn't apply outside the walls) and behave badly. The Moulin Rouge opened at the foot of the hill in 1889, the same year as the Eiffel Tower, and instantly became the most famous cabaret in the world.

Place du Tertre, the central square, has been an artists' market since the early 1800s. Today it can feel overwhelmingly commercial, but duck into the side streets and the old Montmartre reveals itself: cobblestone lanes, ivy-covered walls, hidden staircases, and the last working vineyard in Paris, the Clos Montmartre, which produces about 500 liters of wine each year — terrible wine, by most accounts, but the harvest festival every October is a beloved local tradition.

Look for the "Le Passe-Muraille" sculpture on Rue Norvins — a man walking through a wall, inspired by Marcel Aymé's 1943 short story about a civil servant who discovers he can pass through solid walls. It's one of the most delightful pieces of public art in Paris.