Where to eat · Southwest French / salads · € · 18e · Montmartre & Pigalle
Le Relais Gascon
The Abbesses address that made its name on one thing: the giant salad, an outsized bowl finished with a layer of garlic-fried potatoes. The rare Montmartre plate that fills you for twelve euros.
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Open every day until late, useful after the hill empties of day-trippers. A second branch is round the corner on rue Joseph de Maistre.
Getting there
- Abbesses12110 m · 2 min walk
- Pigalle212220 m · 4 min walk
- Blanche2420 m · 8 min walk
Walks that pass nearby
- Montmartre Heightsstop 2 of 6 · 80 m
Place des Abbesses
One of only two surviving Hector Guimard métro entrances with the original glass canopy. The cast-iron Art Nouveau lettering is the most photographed métro sign in the city.
The Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre church on the same square (1904) is the first reinforced-concrete church in the world — easy to miss because the brick facade looks conventional. Coffee at Le Sancerre on the corner is a Montmartre standby.
- Belle Époque Parisstop 6 of 6 · 90 m
Métro Abbesses entrance
Hector Guimard's 1900 cast-iron entrance. One of only two édicules with the original glass canopy still in place — the rest of his entrances had their roofs removed for being "too modern." The deepest station in the métro at 36 m.
Tap your ticket and ride the spiral staircase down rather than the lift — the walls are painted with murals on the way. Coming back up, take the lift; that's 174 steps the hard way. The other surviving original Guimard édicule is at Porte Dauphine.
- Cinemas That Survivedstop 3 of 6 · 200 m
Studio 28
10 Rue Tholozé, opened 1928 — the first ciné d'art-et-d'essai ("art-and-experiment cinema") in the world. Buñuel and Cocteau both consulted on the décor; the bar has Cocteau-designed light fittings and chairs. Premiered Buñuel and Dalí's L'Âge d'Or in 1930 to a riot.
The bar (open before films) is the secret — Cocteau's painted murals and original 1928 lamp shades. Have a drink in the courtyard garden behind, then sit in the velvet-seated single auditorium. Programming leans art-house and repertory; sometimes the film is in original-version English with French subtitles.
- Paris Verticalstop 4 of 6 · 420 m
Sacré-Cœur dome
Dome at the top of the basilica, 213 m above sea level — the highest publicly accessible point in central Paris after the Eiffel and Montparnasse towers. 300 narrow spiral steps; no lift.
Entrance is on the left side of the basilica facade — separate ticket, paid in cash at the bottom of the stairs. Avoid Sundays (mass crowds the parvis). The dome closes earlier than the basilica; check the day's schedule.
Within a few minutes' walk
- Madame ArthurDrag cabaret€€ · 3 minA drag cabaret operating under this name since 1946, now a weekly French-chanson revue in a small Pigalle room: four performers in opulent costume reworking the standards, the theme rewritten each week.
- Bouillon PigalleBouillon€ · 4 minThe modern bouillon below Montmartre: oeuf mayo, bœuf bourguignon, île flottante, in big portions at small prices.
- Hôtel MasséBoutique hotel€€€ · 7 minForty rooms over burgundy corridors in a Haussmann building deep in SoPi, where each room is deliberately unalike — sloped ceilings, open bathtubs, zinc-roof views — and every bathroom carries a tile signed by the artist Héloïse Rival.
- Studio 28Historic cinema with garden bar€ · 7 minOpened in 1928 as the first cinema built for the avant-garde — Buñuel's L'Âge d'Or provoked a riot here in 1930. Chandeliers designed by Cocteau hang in the 170-seat hall, and a back garden runs as a bar.
- Grand Pigalle ExperimentalBoutique hotel€€ · 7 minThe Experimental Group's 2015 SoPi corner house — Dorothée Meilichzon's first hotel and still among her best — thirty-seven rooms over a cocktail bar that takes its drinks seriously. The ground floor is now Frenchie Pigalle.
- Hôtel des Arts MontmartreMontmartre boutique€€ · 7 minA family-run boutique on rue Tholozé, the street that climbs to the Moulin de la Galette, a few minutes below Sacré-Cœur. No grand view; the reward is the address and the upkeep at a fair price.
Where to stay near Le Relais Gascon
- Hôtel RochechouartRooftop-view boutique hotel€€ · 5 minA restored Art-Deco building in Pigalle with an open-air rooftop framing Sacré-Cœur and the Eiffel Tower — real style and a real view at mid prices.
- Le PigalleBoutique hotel€€ · 6 minA neighbourhood-soul hotel in South-Pigalle with no real front desk — the ground floor runs café, bar, vinyl and newsstand together, and rooms feel like a stylish local's flat.
- Hôtel Bonséjour MontmartreBudget hotel€ · 6 minA plain, well-kept budget house on the cobbled rue Burq below Abbesses, several of its rooms opening onto small iron balconies over the street. No frills, strong value, a quiet address inside a busy quarter.
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The district · 18e
Montmartre & Pigalle — The butteSacré-Cœur and the artists' square up top; the back-streets of Abbesses and Lamarck below; Pigalle's neon and the Saint-Ouen flea market at the edge. Steep, photogenic, and busiest where the tour groups cluster.
Best for: View-chasers and night-owls who'll climb for it; pick the quieter north side.
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