Montparnasse, Paris landmark

Guide to the Montparnasse district of Paris. Virtual tour.

Paris map

Eiffel Tower, Invalides Army Museum, Military School, Order of the Legion of Honor

Photo, The collage shows from left to right:
— Gare Montparnasse, station square with trams, early 20th century
– A steam locomotive that broke through the wall of the station and rolled out onto the square
– cafe (restaurant) “Dom”, which still exists
– ladies sitting in a cafe
– a fragment of a film about the creative intelligentsia, about artists.
Usually Montparnasse (French “Mount Parnassus”) is called an area in the south of Paris, located in the 53rd quarter and other parts of the XIV district of the capital. In the 17th century, there was a large pile of garbage, where students from the nearby Latin Quarter came to read poetry. According to legend, it was they who jokingly called this area “Panas”. Its center is the station and boulevard of the same name. Once Montparnasse was a mountain or a hill like Montmartre, but in 1760, during the construction of the boulevard (Boulevard du Montparnasse), it was leveled.
During the years of the French Revolution, a large number of dance halls, cabarets and restaurants opened here.
The railway station built here turned this area into a convenient communication center, and also “glorified” it all over the world. In 1895, a steam locomotive broke through the wall of the station and rolled out onto the square, which was immediately photographed and replicated in all the newspapers of the world. At the beginning of the 20th century, creative intelligentsia began to gather here: poets, writers, artists and philosophers. A convenient location for visitors from the suburbs, inexpensive housing as the outskirts of Paris, the presence of cheap “diners” made this area a place of residence and communication for future political leaders of Russia, primarily Lenin, Trotsky and even Petliura. In some cafes, there are even memorial plaques on the tables with the names of regulars like “V. Lenin”.
After the “Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917” there was a “changing of the guard”. Instead of the Bolsheviks, their opponents began to gather here, forced to leave their homeland as a result of the “Great Russian Exodus” or on “philosophical ships” as enemies of Soviet power.
Russian military circles, former officers and generals, chose the neighborhood of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on Rue Daru (Sialsky’s shop, the Petrograd restaurant) or “their” Russian restaurants as their meeting places. Montparnasse also became the “official” meeting place of the Russian creative intelligentsia, which was greatly facilitated by the location of the YMCA headquarters and the editorial offices of magazines here.
“Montparnasse” is a collection and association in the 20-30 years of artists, artists, actors and musicians, poets, writers, philosophers and publishers.

The main attractions of the area.
– railway station, transport hub and engineering structure
– tower and observation deck
– paris observatory
– theaters
– Montparnasse Museum (now the cultural center “Villa Vasiliev”)
– Picasso square
– cafes, restaurants, dance halls
Observation deck.
On the roof of the skyscraper tower there is a special area and an observation deck, which is one of the main three places from where tourists admire the panorama of Paris. From here you have a magnificent view of the Eiffel Tower, the Latin Quarter and the city center, which is out of sight from other vantage points.
Cafes and restaurants.
As already mentioned above, local cafes and restaurants have more than a century of history and are in themselves places of world cultural heritage, including both France and Russia, Ukraine and even the United States.

– “Le Dôme Café” – the famous restaurant, founded in 1898
– “La Rotonde” – a cafe where Trotsky brawled and Picasso dined
– Closeri de Lila
– “Dome”