Musée de Montmartre

The Musée de Montmartre is housed in one of the hill’s oldest buildings, the 17th-century Maison du Bel Air. Artists like Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Émile Bernard, and Suzanne Valadon once lived here. It was in this very garden that Renoir painted his famous work The Swing.

The museum was founded in 1960 to preserve Montmartre’s artistic history. It tells the story of the neighborhood when it was still a village filled with cabarets, studios, and the bohemian lives of painters, writers, and musicians.

You’ll find posters from the Moulin Rouge, works by Valadon and Utrillo, and traces of the time when Picasso and his friends changed the art world. The garden remains a quiet spot overlooking the city, a place where you can feel how Montmartre once was—a cradle of creativity, far from the bustle of Paris.