If you’re looking for where to stay in Paris, sooner or later you’ll put Montmartre on the shortlist: it’s the neighbourhood everyone knows from photographs, with its cobbled lanes and the white basilica at the top of the hill. But along its main streets it’s also the most touristy neighbourhood in the city: on Place du Tertre and on the upper stretch of rue Lepic you walk through a crowd at almost any hour of the day, and the climb up to the forecourt is not a figure of speech. The hill stands more than 130 metres above sea level, and the last stretch, the one the funicular covers, gains 36 metres of elevation on its own in just 108 metres of track.
Is it really worth sleeping up here, or is it more the charm of the postcard than the comfort of the holiday?
Let’s go!
Place du Tertre and the upper rue Lepic: the tourist heart
If your accommodation overlooks Place du Tertre, the stretch of rue Lepic that climbs towards the Moulin de la Galette, or rue Norvins, you’ve picked the dead centre of the postcard. By day the painters’ square is almost never empty, and the souvenir shops stay open until the evening: the upside is having the Sacré-Cœur a few steps away, and the downside is those same few steps, multiplied by the thousands of tourists who walk them with you.
Rue Lepic isn’t touristy along its whole length, and that’s where the verdict shifts. In the lower part, towards the market and the Café des Deux Moulins, the café made famous by the film Amélie, the street is still lively but already more ordinary: neighbourhood bars, a grocer’s, the little tables of people who really live here. It’s as you climb towards the Moulin de la Galette that rue Lepic gets steeper and more photographed, with groups stopping at every corner for the shot.
Rue des Abbesses and the north side: where the neighbourhood is lived
Why can two streets two hundred metres apart earn opposite verdicts?
Because they run down opposite sides of the hill. Rue des Abbesses, rue Caulaincourt and the side streets of the north slope are still inside Montmartre, but outside the direct flow towards the basilica: here the bakeries sell real bread and the bars chalk the day’s menu on a board instead of printing it in four languages. In the evening you can walk without the afternoon crush. Place des Abbesses, the crossroads where the two souls of the neighbourhood meet, has a detail worth stopping for: the glass canopy and green ironwork over the metro entrance weren’t made for this spot. Hector Guimard designed it for the Hôtel de Ville station, and it was moved to Montmartre only in 1974. Together with the one at Porte Dauphine, it’s one of only two left in Paris with the original roof intact.
Sleeping on this side means accepting a longer walk to the Sacré-Cœur, in exchange for quieter nights and a breakfast that doesn’t cost the price of the view.
How much you really climb
How many metres, exactly, is this climb everyone talks about?
More than a romantic name lets you imagine. The highest point of the hill touches 130.53 metres above sea level, and the gradient isn’t uniform: it grows as you get closer to the forecourt. The steepest stretch of all is the one the Montmartre funicular covers in under a minute and a half, 36 metres of elevation over just 108 metres of track, the same figure I use in my guide to the Sacré-Cœur to explain how demanding that final ramp is.
The practical consequence is simple: the closer your accommodation is to the basilica, the steeper the last stretch on foot will be, suitcase included. If you stay near rue des Abbesses or the lower part of rue Caulaincourt you face a longer but gentler climb; if you stay right by Place du Tertre you face a shorter climb, all of it concentrated in the final steps.
The stations and the funicular
How do you actually get up here with your luggage?
It depends on which station you choose, because two are dug into the hill and two sit at its foot. Abbesses, on line 12, has its platforms 36 metres deep: it was the deepest on the whole Paris metro network until January 2025, when it was overtaken by the Villejuif-Gustave Roussy station on line 14, but it remains the deepest within Paris itself. To get back up to street level there are lifts, or a spiral staircase of 176 steps if you prefer stairs. Lamarck-Caulaincourt, also on line 12 but on the north slope, is a little less deep, 25 metres, and has four lift cabins, two for going up and two for going down: it’s the most convenient station if you arrive with heavy luggage or reduced mobility, because it’s also the closest to the residential streets of the quiet side.
Anvers and Blanche, both on line 2, sit instead at the foot of the hill, on the opposite side from Lamarck-Caulaincourt: from there you climb on foot or, from Anvers, you reach the base of the funicular in a few minutes. The Montmartre funicular, run by RATP, links Place Saint-Pierre with the Sacré-Cœur forecourt in under a minute and a half; it costs the same as a metro ride and accepts the Navigo pass, but it has to be validated again: it isn’t a continuation of your metro journey.
Pigalle, downhill, a different neighbourhood at night
Go down a block or two towards boulevard de Clichy and Pigalle changes register completely from the quiet streets you’ve just left. It’s the neighbourhood of the Moulin Rouge and of a tradition of red-light venues that has never really stopped here, even if in recent years it shares the streets with trendier bars and restaurants. It isn’t a neighbourhood to avoid, but anyone who books a place right on boulevard de Clichy expecting the same calm as the residential streets higher up is often taken by surprise: the contrast between the two atmospheres is a matter of blocks, not kilometres, and it’s sharper in the evening than during the day.
Who Montmartre suits, and who it doesn’t
Montmartre rewards those who stay at least two or three nights, like walking and want the feel of a village inside the city, with the history of Renoir and the other artists who lived here within easy walking distance. It rewards less those with heavy luggage or reduced mobility: there are lifts, at Lamarck-Caulaincourt and at Abbesses, but the stairs and the slopes are real wherever you stay, and neither station removes the climb on foot to your front door altogether.
It suits you less, too, if you want to stay a short walk from the historic centre: Montmartre sits off to the north of the tourist heart of Paris, and from the Louvre, from Orsay or from Notre-Dame you almost always have a change of line in between, while if you sleep in the Marais or on the Île de la Cité you often get there on foot or with a single metro stop. If your itinerary revolves mostly around the great museums along the Seine, another neighbourhood will save you time every day of your stay.
Practical information
Station data checked on 9 October 2026 on Wikipedia, in Italian, French and English, except for the Villejuif-Gustave Roussy overtaking, which comes from the RATP and Île-de-France Mobilités press release of 18 January 2025; the height of the hill and the funicular’s elevation come from the figures already checked, on the basilica’s official website, for my guide to the Sacré-Cœur. Stations, hours and services can change: check again before you leave.
Elevation. The highest point of the hill remains at 130.53 metres above sea level. The funicular’s final ramp alone climbs 36 metres over 108 metres of track. Abbesses station. It’s on line 12, with platforms 36 metres deep: it has lifts, or a spiral staircase of 176 steps. Lamarck-Caulaincourt station. It’s on line 12, with platforms 25 metres deep, and it has four lift cabins, two going up and two going down. Anvers and Blanche stations. They’re on line 2 and both sit at the foot of the hill, without the depth of the two stations dug into the hill. Funicular. It links Place Saint-Pierre with the Sacré-Cœur forecourt in under a minute and a half. It costs the same as a metro ride and accepts the Navigo pass, but it needs a new validation, like a journey of its own. At night. Pigalle, at the foot of the hill on boulevard de Clichy, has a different atmosphere from the residential streets higher up: it’s a nightlife neighbourhood, without the calm you find further up.
Before you book
If after this tally you still think Montmartre is the right neighbourhood for you, choose the street with care and not just the name of the neighbourhood: the difference between a quiet night and one among the tourist groups comes down to a few hundred metres. If instead you need a starting point for comparing the city’s other neighbourhoods as well, start from Where to stay in Paris. And before you choose the exact street, it’s worth knowing what you’ll find outside your door: my guide to what to see in Montmartre walks you through the stops on the hill one by one, from the basilica to the wall of “je t’aime”.
Photographs by Chabe01, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
