Moulin de la Galette: The Last Windmills of Montmartre
Why is it significant?
At the corner of rue Lepic and rue Girardon, look up: perched on top of a restaurant, a wooden windmill with dark sails stands against the sky. A little further down rue Lepic, behind a fence and trees on private ground, you can glimpse a second, older one.
Key Facts
| Place | Moulin de la Galette: The Last Windmills of Montmartre |
|---|---|
| Address | 83 Rue Lepic, 75018 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.88740, 2.33710 |
| Part of Walk | Painters, Windmills and Cancan: Montmartre, the Artists' Hill of Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
At the corner of rue Lepic and rue Girardon, look up: perched on top of a restaurant, a wooden windmill with dark sails stands against the sky. A little further down rue Lepic, behind a fence and trees on private ground, you can glimpse a second, older one. They are the last survivors of some thirty mills that once turned on this windy hill.
The older one is the Blute-Fin, built in 1622, and the one above you is the Radet, from 1717, moved a short distance to this corner in the 1920s. For generations both belonged to a family of millers, the Debrays. Their flour fed Paris, but they found a better business: on Sundays they sold little flat cakes, galettes, with a glass of milk or wine, to the walkers who climbed the hill. Soon there was music, then a dance floor, and the mills gave their name to the Moulin de la Galette, the most famous dance hall in Montmartre.
The family had a darker legend too. In 1814, when the armies allied against Napoleon reached the gates of Paris, the millers of Montmartre are said to have fought from their windmills. One of the Debrays was killed, and the story goes that his body was cut to pieces and nailed to the sails of his mill. Nobody can confirm the gruesome details... but Montmartre has been telling the story for two centuries.
By the 1870s seamstresses, shop girls, students and painters danced here every Sunday afternoon. In 1876 Renoir painted them in Bal du moulin de la Galette, sunlight dappling straw hats and striped dresses, with his friends and local girls as models. It is now one of the jewels of the Musée d'Orsay. Van Gogh, who lived just down the street, painted these windmills again and again, and Toulouse-Lautrec painted the dance hall too. And in the autumn of 1900, a nineteen-year-old Spaniard on his very first visit to Paris made it the subject of one of his first Paris canvases. His name was Pablo Picasso.
The dance hall is long gone, and the sails no longer grind anything. But on a windy day, if you stand here quietly, you can almost hear the accordion. Follow rue Lepic as it twists down the hill, past the gate of the Blute-Fin, and look out for number 54.