Montparnasse

Neighborhood · Montparnasse (6th and 14th)Paris,France

The Paris quarter that took in the artists Montmartre priced out, its academies admitting women, its name borrowed from an old spoil heap.

Montparnasse is the quarter that took in the artists Montmartre priced out. When Montmartre grew expensive in the first years of the twentieth century, painters and sculptors came down here instead, and by the 1920s this was where a foreign artist without money went first. The reason was practical: studios were cheap, and the private academies took students the state school refused. The Grande Chaumière, opened here in 1902 by two women painters, let women draw from the male nude, and it still runs its life classes. At the far edge of the quarter, La Ruche still houses about fifty artists in a building that began as a pavilion at a world's fair. Bourdelle's studio a few streets away is kept as a museum, with his plaster models standing in the room where he made them. The name is a joke. Students from the Latin Quarter called an old spoil heap here mont Parnasse, after the mountain where the Muses were supposed to live, and the joke outlived the hill.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Start at the Vavin crossroads and walk south-west — That junction is where the rubble hill stood, and the studios and academies are spread out over the streets behind and beyond it.
The life class is open to walk-in artists — The Grande Chaumière still runs its sessions with a live model, the same arrangement that drew artists here a century ago.
Look for studio windows — Whole streets here were built for painters, so scan the upper floors for the tall north-facing glass that marks a purpose-built studio, and notice how many are now flats.
The cafés on the boulevard are part of the evidence — Between the wars the quarter's business was done in them, so look at the frontages as you pass rather than planning your day around them.

Things to do

1
Stand in the passage outside La Ruche
The building is a working artists' residence, so you do not walk in and wander. From the passage you can see the round pavilion and the studio windows, and the ground-floor gallery puts on shows that anyone can enter. It is the clearest surviving piece of the quarter as it was around 1900, still standing and still used for the same purpose.
2
Watch a life class through the door
The academy on rue de la Grande-Chaumière runs sessions with a live model most days. You are there to watch rather than to join in, but the door is on the street and the room is visible from it. The set-up has not changed since Modigliani worked here: a model, a timer and whoever turns up.
3
See a sculptor's workshop left as it was
The sculptor Bourdelle's studio and the yard around it were kept and built into a museum. His plaster models stand in the room where he made them rather than in a gallery, which is the closest you get in this quarter to seeing how these artists actually worked.