Montmartre is a village that happens to sit on the most-photographed hill in Paris, and the trick is to walk it as the village. Skip the funicular and the crush at the foot of the steps. The good stuff is round the back: a windmill, a vineyard, a pink café, and a basilica you can reach without queuing behind anyone.
Start at Place des Abbesses and climb rue Lepic, the market street, past the Moulin de la Galette — one of two windmills left from the thirty that once turned here. Up to Place Dalida, then down the cobbled curve of rue de l'Abreuvoir, where La Maison Rose sits pink on its corner exactly as the painters left it. The Clos Montmartre vineyard is just beyond, a few hundred vines on the slope, harvested every October.
Come at Sacré-Cœur from behind, by rue du Chevalier-de-la-Barre, and you arrive without the terrace mob. Go in; the dome is the quietest place on the hill. Pass Place du Tertre on the way out — quickly — and drop down the far side to Lamarck – Caulaincourt, the loveliest métro stair in Paris, and the line home.
