Montmartre is a
hill (the butte Montmartre) which is 130 metres high, giving its
name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the
18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is
primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur
on its summit and as a nightclub district. The other, older,
church on the hill is Saint Pierre de Montmartre, which claims
to be the location at which the Jesuit order of priests was
founded. Many artists had studios or worked around the community
of Montmartre such as Salvador Dalí, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude
Monet, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.
Montmartre is also the setting for several hit films. This site
is served by metro line 2 stations of Anvers, Pigalle and
Blanche and the line 12 stations of Pigalle, Abbesses, Lamarck -
Caulaincourt and Jules Joffrin.
The toponym Mons Martis ("Mount of Mars" in Latin) survived into
Merovingian times, Christianised as Montmartre, signifying
'mountain of the martyr'; it owes this name to the martyrdom of
Saint Denis, who was decapitated on the hill around 250 AD.
Saint Denis was the Bishop of Paris and is the patron saint of
France.