Life and beauty beyond the Sacre-Coeur

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Life and beauty beyond the Sacre-Coeur

It’s one of those fabulous wintry mornings you get in Paris.

It’s cold — close to zero degrees — but the sky is so wonderfully blue you’ll be OK with that. Put on your big coat, hat, gloves and you’re away, out of your hotel, ready to savour one of the world’s most beautiful cities in one of its best lights.

On days like this, there are so many places you’ll be tempted to go and snap Parisian landmarks against a perfect, cloudless backdrop.

Moi?

I often find myself gravitating towards Montmartre, the artsy old village capped by the Sacre-Coeur basilica. There’s something very special about walking to Square Louise Michel — just up from the Anvers Metro stop — and glancing up at the hilltop basilica, its white dome towers gleaming against the brilliant azure sky.

Camera IconThe Sacre-Coeur basilica on a crisp winter’s morning. Credit: Steve McKenna/

And any feelings of being cold usually dissipate as I march up the 200 or so steps flanking the terraced gardens linking the square with the Sacre-Coeur (you can also walk up a sloped path or hop on a funicular for 90 seconds).

Now, admittedly, when I reach the top, I tend not to hang around. It’s normally just too busy, especially on a sunny day.

The terrace at the front of the basilica is routinely clogged with crowds taking selfies with — and snaps of — the sweeping Parisian panorama, the city’s sprawling skyline bleached by the sluggishly ascending morning sun.

There’s also usually a lengthy ****** to enter the basilica, while around the corner, past the organ grinders and busking guitarists, there’s another tourist magnet, Place du Tertre, where painters have long gathered with their easels and canvases. Bars and eateries fringe this square, most with outdoor seating.

Today ruddy-cheeked tourists are huddling at tables, sipping coffee, smoking, and generally looking quite chilly. They’re in the shade thanks to that low-hanging winter sun. Leaving the square behind, I wander the narrow, neighbouring, medieval cobbled lanes, passing low-rise ivy-clad buildings, bohemian bars, studios and other rustic old haunts of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

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They were among the artists who hung out in Montmartre during the Belle Epoque *******, when the Sacre-Coeur was being constructed between 1875 and 1919.

I pass by the colourful Au Lapin Agile, billed as Paris’ oldest cabaret club, first opened in 1860, when Montmartre was officially absorbed into the city.

Close by, on Rue de l’Abreuvoir, there’s La Maison Rose, a pink-hued, green-shuttered restaurant previously frequented by Picasso, Dali and Dalida, a French-Italian singer and actress who lived locally. She’s immortalised in a bust that was unveiled in 1997 — a decade after her death — further down this sloping street.

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Behind Place Dalida is one of several flights of steps that connect Montmartre to a strikingly different pocket of Paris, where there’s more room to breathe and locals far outnumber tourists. I see an elderly man in a flat cap carrying a baguette and another flicking through his mobile phone outside a fruit and vegetable stall.

Often known as the Jules Joffrin district, close to Paris’ northern limits, Clignancourt is still part of the same (18th) arrondissement — turn around and you’ll see the top of Sacre-Coeur looming above — but it feels much further away.

This is ungentrified, unpolished Paris. Side roads, boulevards and little squares are lined with medium-rise apartments, many at street level, that contain grocery and electronics stores, laundrettes, fishmongers, pharmacies, boulangeries, patisseries, fromageries, barbers, and copious places in which to sit down, eat, drink, linger, and watch Paris — and the Parisians — go by.

On the terrace of one cafe, a man, with his dog, is doing the crossword. On the next table, a woman is leafing through a paperback novel.

I pass old-school bistros, grungy co-working hubs, hole-in-the-wall bars and sleek and shiny brunch spots before ducking inside Dose, a little coffee roastery that provides a nice warm refuge and a caffeine-fired spring in my step.

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A few minutes on foot from here is the heart of this enclave, a square wedged between the neoclassical mairie (town hall) of the 18th arrondissement and the Eglise Notre-Dame de Clignancourt, whose bells are sounding for noon as I walk towards it.

The church’s cornerstone was laid by none other than Baron Haussmann, the urban planner who drove the dramatic expansion and renewal of Paris in the 1860s.

Below the square, meanwhile, is a Metro station named in honour of a lesser-known, but significant late 19th-century figure, Jules Joffrin. He was a war veteran who was involved in the Paris Commune, a left-leaning crew of revolutionaries that briefly seized power in the city in 1871.

Later exiled to England, Joffrin returned to his homeland to resume his political career, but died, aged 44, in Paris in 1890.

I briefly ponder going underground and boarding a train. Jules Joffrin is on Line 12, a short ride from the likes of Abbesses and Pigalle, on the south side of the Montmartre hill, and a little further away (15 minutes), Concorde, a stop between the Champs-Elysees and the Jardin des Tuileries, and the gateway to numerous other Parisian sights and streets.

But, as I often do in the French capital, I decide to just keep on walking, confident there’ll be something else of interest and intrigue around the next corner.

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+ For more information on visiting Paris, see

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#Life #beauty #SacreCoeur

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