Black Montmartre Walking Tour

We begin at a small vineyard tucked among apartment buildings, a reminder that Montmartre was once covered in vines. The wine sold here set the stage for a community that would eventually welcome an extension of the Harlem Renaissance.

We pass one of Montmartre’s most photographed streets and buildings, a picture-perfect moment.

One of the oldest churches in Paris, Saint-Pierre marks Montmartre as sacred ground and a site of pilgrimage for African and Caribbean seminaries in the early 1800s. For years, people from all over the world climbed this hill, tracing the steps of Montmartre’s legendary bishop.

We won’t enter the basilica, but we’ll unpack the tragic events that led to its construction and how they shaped Montmartre’s rebellious, outsider culture.

At Montmartre’s center, where art and politics collide, we revisit post–World War I celebrations honoring Black soldiers, alongside a lesser-known and more troubling commemoration held in the square.

Best known as Picasso's studio, the Bateau-Lavoir gives us a moment to step beyond the famous names and look at the work of lesser-known Black artists who passed through Montmartre, artists shaped by the same precarity, and experimentation that defined the hill.

We pass by the Moulin de la Galette, once a windmill turned popular dance spot, where working-class Parisians, artists, and outsiders gathered.

In front of the Moulin Rouge, we see how Montmartre’s rebellious spirit spilled downhill into Pigalle’s looser nightlife, creating a rare space that welcomed Black performers.

We stop at the former site of Chez Josephine, where we unpack the performance that made Josephine Baker a star and how it clashed with the ideals of the Negritude movement.

We end at the former site of Le Grand Duc, a hugely popular jazz club and pillar of Paris’s Jazz Age. Here, we trace how that era came to an end and where Black communities in Paris took root afterward.