General information
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred on the intersection of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes. Montparnasse was absorbed into the capital's 14th arrondissement in 1860.
 



About Montparnasse
The area also gives its name to:

    * Gare Montparnasse – trains to Brittany, TGV to Tours, Bordeaux, Le Mans; rebuilt as a modern TGV station;
    * The large Montparnasse – Bienvenüe métro station;
    * Cimetière du Montparnasse – the Montparnasse Cemetery, where Charles Baudelaire, Constantin Brâncuşi, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett, and Susan Sontag are buried
    * Tour Montparnasse, a lone skyscraper.

The Pasteur Institute is located in the area. Beneath the ground are tunnels of the Catacombs of Paris.

The name Montparnasse stems from the nickname "Mount Parnassus" (In Greek mythology, home to the nine Greek goddesses – the Muses – of the arts and sciences) given to the hilly neighbourhood in the 17th century by students who came there to recite poetry.

The hill was levelled to construct the Boulevard Montparnasse in the 18th century. During the French Revolution many dance halls and cabarets opened their doors.

The area is also known for cafes and bars, such as the Breton restaurants specialising in crêpes (thin pancakes) located a few blocks from the Gare Montparnasse.

What to Do & See

Like its counterpart Montmartre, Montparnasse became famous at the beginning of the 20th century, referred to as les Années Folles (the Crazy Years), when it was the heart of intellectual and artistic life in Paris. From 1910 to the start of World War II, Paris' artistic circles migrated to Montparnasse, an alternative to the Montmartre district which had been the intellectual breeding ground for the previous generation of artists.

The Paris of Zola, Manet, France, Degas, Fauré, a group that had assembled more on the basis of status affinity than actual artistic tastes, indulging in the refinements of Dandyism, was at the opposite end of the economic, social, and political spectrum from the gritty, tough-talking, die-hard, emigrant artists that peopled Montparnasse.

A few of the other artists who gathered in Montparnasse were Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, Ossip Zadkine, José Maria Decrefft,Carmelo Gonzalez,Julio Gonzalez,Gines Parra, Joaquín Peinado, Moise Kisling, Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Marios Varvoglis, Marc Chagall, Nina Hamnett, Jean Rhys, Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, Chaim Soutine, Michel Kikoine, Pinchus Kremegne, Amedeo Modigliani, Ford Madox Ford, Toño Salazar, Ezra Pound, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti, Henri Rousseau, Constantin Brancusi, Paul Fort, Juan Gris, Diego Rivera,Federico Cantú,Angel Zarraga, Marevna, Tsuguharu Foujita, Marie Vassilieff, Léon-Paul Fargue, Alberto Giacometti, René Iché, André Breton,Alfonso Reyes, Pascin, Salvador Dalí, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Joan Miró and, in his declining years, Edgar Degas.

How to Get there?

Montparnasse-Bienvenüe

 Lines 28, 58, 82, 91, 92, 95, 96