General Information
Montparnasse is an area on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse was absorbed into the capital’s 6th and 14th arrondissements in 1669.
Additional Information
The name Montparnasse stems from the nickname ‘Mount Parnassus’ (In Greek mythology, home to the nine Greek goddesses – the Muses – of the arts and sciences) given to the hilly neighbourhood in the 17th century by students who went there to recite poetry. The hill was levelled to construct the Boulevard Montparnasse in the 18th century. During the French Revolution, many dance halls and cabarets opened their doors.
The Pasteur Institute is located in the Montparnasse area. Beneath the ground are the tunnels of the Catacombs of Paris. The area is also known for cafés and bars, such as the Breton restaurants specialising in crêpes (thin pancakes) located a few blocks from the Gare Montparnasse.
History: Highlights
In post-WWI Paris, Montparnasse was a euphoric meeting ground for the artistic world. Artists came to Montparnasse from all over the globe. Among those who gathered there were Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, Marc Chagall, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Amedeo Modigliani, Ezra Pound, Salvador Dalí, Samuel Beckett and Edgar Degas.
History: Explained
Like its counterpart Montmartre, Montparnasse became famous at the beginning of the 20th century, referred to as les Années Folles (the Crazy Years), when it was the heart of intellectual and artistic life in Paris. From 1910 to the start of World War II, Paris’ artistic circles migrated to Montparnasse, an alternative to the Montmartre district which had been the intellectual breeding ground for the previous generation of artists. The Paris of Zola, Manet, France, Fauré, a group that had assembled more on the basis of status affinity than actual artistic tastes, indulging in the refinements of Dandyism, was at the opposite end of the economic, social, and political spectrum from the gritty, tough-talking, die-hard, emigrant artists that settled in Montparnasse.
Montparnasse was a community where creativity was embraced with all its oddities, each new arrival welcomed unreservedly by its existing members. The cafés and bars of Montparnasse were a meeting place where ideas were hatched and mulled over. The cafés at the centre of Montparnasse’s nightlife were in the Carrefour Vavin, now renamed Place Pablo-Picasso.
While the area attracted people who came to live and work in the creative, bohemian environment, it also became home for political exiles such as Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Porfirio Díaz, and Symon Petlyura. Finally, World War II forced the dispersal of the artistic society, and after the war Montparnasse never regained its splendour.
Interesting Facts
In Montparnasse’s heyday, from 1910 to 1920, the cafés Le Dôme, La Closerie des Lilas, La Rotonde, Le Select and La Coupole were the places where starving artists could occupy a table all evening for a few centimes. All of these places are still in business.
When Japanese painter Tsuguharu Foujita arrived in 1913 not knowing a soul, he met Soutine, Modigliani, Pascin and Leger virtually the same night and within a week became friends with Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Foujita claimed in his memoir that he met Picasso less than a week after his arrival, but a recent biographer, relying on letters Foujita sent to his first wife in Japan, clearly shows that it was several months until he met Picasso.
Between 1921 and 1924, the number of Americans in Paris grew from 6,000 to 30,000.