Paris of the Roaring Twenties
Follow the avant-garde from the Moulin Rouge to the cafés of Montparnasse.
Between 1920 and 1930, Paris became the capital of the modern world: painters, writers and jazz musicians priced out of Montmartre moved south to Montparnasse, bookshops published scandalous novels and the dance halls never closed. This journey follows that trail station by station, in the order the story actually happened — from the last cabarets of Place Blanche to the dance floor of La Coupole.
The first 2 stops are free to read below — the full journey, with practical tips for every stop, unlocks with the 7-day Pass.
Place Blanche and the Moulin Rouge
Start where the 1920s night ended. The Moulin Rouge, already thirty years old, was still the emblem of Parisian cabaret, and Mistinguett was its queen through the decade. Place Blanche was the doorstep where the after-hours crowd — painters, dancers, drifting writers — spilled out as the sky turned grey.
Tip · Stand on the corner of Place Blanche after dusk: the windmill of the Moulin Rouge lit up is the purest image left from the era.
The Bateau-Lavoir, cradle of the avant-garde
Walk up from Abbesses to Place Émile Goudeau and the wooden building nicknamed the Bateau-Lavoir. Picasso painted his decisive early works here, and the whole creative world of pre-war Montmartre — Braque, Modigliani, Apollinaire — passed through its single damp corridor. By the 1920s the scene was leaving for Montparnasse, and this stop is where the story starts before you follow it south.
Tip · The original studio burned in 1970; the rebuilt façade faces the square. Pair this stop with a walk down Rue Lepic toward Blanche for the full Montmartre slope.
🔒 4 more stops with the 7-day Pass
🔒 Shakespeare and Company, rue de l’Odéon
The bookshop that published Ulysses — and lent books to Hemingway.
🔒 La Rotonde and Le Dôme, the cafés of Montparnasse
The corner tables where Picasso and Modigliani ran up tabs.
🔒 La Coupole and Le Select, the dance halls of 1927
Inside the 1927 dance hall that never closed.
🔒 Hemingway’s first Paris home
The top-floor flat where Hemingway wrote his first Paris stories.