162 years of history at 34 boulevard de Clichy

34 boulevard de Clichy stands in lower Montmartre, at the heart of the historic Pigalle district. The boulevard itself was home to Degas (no. 6), Picasso (no. 11 and no. 130), Renoir, Sarah Bernhardt, Pascin (no. 36), Daumier, Anders Zorn (no. 71), Signac (no. 128 bis), Kupka (no. 83) and Jean-Léon Gérôme (no. 65). Long discreet, no. 34 hosted Manet, Pottier, Dargaud, Henri Marre, Hella Guth, Pierre-Luc Feitu, Michel Batlle — among many others.

The four-storey street building was constructed between 1801 and 1850 (source: Paris cadastre). At the back of the courtyard, a set of artists' studios in brick and timber framing — built between the late 19th and very early 20th century — is reached through a sloping paved alley.

A porte cochère — still recognisable in early photographs — opens onto a first courtyard. The alley climbs slightly: this is the foot of the Butte. It leads to two small "doll's houses" at its end. And, surprise: behind the rear building, a tiny second courtyard opens onto further studios buried in greenery. The street building is locked by a digicode and the private courtyard is not open to the public.

When you step through the porch, what strikes you most is the silence. You feel as if you were in the countryside. A small bucolic paradise, a preserved space. Sixteen artists' studios, a paradise of greenery.

The real Montmartre. A hidden treasure.

The website Paris-Promeneurs describes these studios as emblematic of the golden age of Montmartre, buried in vegetation and retaining a great deal of character. They are documented photographically by the blog Paris-bise-art in an article dated 26 February 2021.

The plot and the double courtyard

The total plot area is 1,867 m² — a sizeable parcel for the boulevard, which explains the double courtyard with studios at the rear. A 1989 redevelopment turned several volumes into housing-studios for artists, prolonging the historic vocation of the place. As recently as 2009, roof windows were added to a unit officially declared as "housing and artist's studio" — proof that this studio function has never been interrupted.

Eiffel steel in the glass roofs — an oral tradition

According to an oral tradition reported by the residents, the steel used for the glass roofs of the rear-courtyard studios is said to come from the building site of the Eiffel Tower (1887-1889). The Eiffel filiation remains to be formally documented, but it is plausible: La Ruche, the Bateau-Lavoir and the Villa des Arts were indeed built using metal frames recovered from the pavilions of the World's Fairs or supplied by the Eiffel workshops in Levallois-Perret, which produced 6,360 tonnes of iron for the Tower.

Distinct from no. 11 boulevard de Clichy

Over almost a century and a half, 34 boulevard de Clichy has hosted an exceptional concentration of Parisian figures — from the great Impressionism to contemporary art, taking in every avant-garde of the 20th century along the way, but also some less expected residents: a macabre cabaret, an aristocratic family keeping a pied-à-terre, a neighbourhood cinema turned sauna. Behind an ordinary boulevard façade, no. 34 is a true hidden artists' colony: its studios are buried at the back of the courtyard, invisible from the street, extending in their own way the great tradition of Montmartre's artists' colonies. Without being an administrative scheme like the Cité Montmartre-aux-Artistes, no. 34 shares its spirit — it is a social palimpsest on which each generation has left its mark, and the interweaving of these presences makes up the identity of the place.

The courtyard-studio at no. 34 has retained its creative vocation for over a century. Some 90 professional entities are registered there today: visual artists, sculptors, architects, film producers, designers, craftspeople. No. 34 thus combines, on a single address, the memory of a generation of pioneers (Manet, Pottier, Dargaud) and the living work of contemporary artists and creators.

Several notable figures from French cinema and journalism have occupied studios or apartments at no. 34 in turn. None still resides there today; their passage nonetheless attests to the continuous artistic and cultural vocation of the courtyard-studio and of building C.

If 34 boulevard de Clichy has sheltered, for one hundred and sixty-two years, a painter from the Reichshoffen cycle, the author of The Internationale, a macabre cabaret, a Senator of Madagascar and a Czech painter, it is because it belongs to a wider history: that of the collective schemes invented in Paris from the early 20th century onwards, to prevent property speculation from driving artists out of the neighbourhood that first welcomed them.

When Vincent van Gogh settled in Montmartre in 1886, with his brother Theo on rue Lepic, the Butte was still almost rural: windmills, market gardens and vacant lots covered its slopes, which he painted tirelessly. It is that Montmartre — village-like, dotted with windmills — that property speculation would swallow up within a generation. The artists' colonies were born precisely of this shift: to preserve, at the heart of a district growing denser and more expensive, places where artists could still live and work. No. 34 boulevard de Clichy belongs to this history — not as an official scheme, but as a hidden artists' colony, whose back-courtyard studios quietly perpetuate, to this day, the spirit of old Montmartre.

1900-1924 — the end of bohemian Montmartre

At the beginning of the 20th century, Montmartre lost its bohemian character: rents rose, speculators bought up land and old studios. Artists' colonies — such as the Cité Montmartre-aux-Artistes or La Ruche — emerged as collective responses to maintain an artistic presence in the neighbourhood, guaranteeing modest rents and spaces suited to work (north-facing skylights, ceiling height, mezzanines).

In 1924, a municipal councillor of the 18^th, Jean Varenne, proposed using a piece of land — the rue Ordener "maquis" — to build affordable studios for low-income artists. A group of artists led by the sculptor Louis-Aimé Lejeune set up an affordable housing company called "Montmartre aux artistes". The City of Paris provided the land and a financial guarantee. The complex opened on rue Ordener, less than a kilometre from no. 34. In 1936, the Public HBM Office — today Paris Habitat — took over management.

No. 34 boulevard de Clichy, another model — private cohabitation

No. 34 does not belong to this public scheme. It is a private condominium whose studios were formed by sedimentation — an attic converted here, a courtyard built up there, a cabaret stage turned into a painter's studio. But it shares the same movement: a neighbourhood that since the 1860s has accepted to host simultaneously café-concerts, themed cabarets, song publishers, sculptors, humorists, photographers and filmmakers — and that still does so today.

1952 — the division of the building into a condominium

Before its division, the building had a chain of ownership going back to the late 19^th century. It belonged to the Parisian publisher-bookseller Henri Justin Édouard Dentu, head of one of the great publishing houses of the Second Empire and the Third Republic, who had acquired it at auction in 1880. Ownership then passed to his heirs, among them his daughter Mélanie Dentu, wife of Philippe de la Borie de la Batut, a barrister at the Paris Court of Appeal. An 1885 partition sale divided the building between the de la Borie de la Batut and Hons Olivier branches, to which the Doquin de Saint-Preux branch — settled in Maracaibo, Venezuela — was later added by marriage.

No. 34 boulevard de Clichy passed from family joint ownership to a condominium on 14 June 1952, through a co-ownership regulation and a descriptive statement of division drawn up by Maître Jean Popelin, a Paris notary (164 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré), later amended in 1954 and 1962. These three families, who had remained in joint ownership for almost seventy years, then decided to sell the building as separate units: it was divided into fifty-six lots — apartments on the upper floors, ground-floor shops, and the series of sixteen artists' studios spread between the first courtyard and the rear courtyard. It is within this shift that Alcide Liotard arrives, moving that very year into studio no. 16, where he would live and paint until 1973.

Today — practical schemes for artists in Montmartre

Paris offers several concrete schemes for artists in Montmartre, even though property pressure remains very strong.

▸ Cité Montmartre-aux-Artistes (189 rue Ordener, 18^th)

• Still the largest artists' colony in Europe — about 180 studio-dwellings.
• Managed by Paris Habitat (City of Paris social landlord).
• Access reserved primarily for artists registered with the Maison des Artistes (mandatory affiliation) and to persons on modest incomes; files reviewed by a committee.
• Moderate rents — around €550-800 according to recent testimony.
• Still operates in its original spirit: protecting artists from speculation.

▸ Cité Internationale des Arts — Montmartre site

• Address: 24 rue Norvins, very near place du Tertre.
• Temporary residencies (3 or 6 months) with a furnished studio-dwelling (~50 m²).
• Usually includes a living grant + a production grant.
• Open to artists worldwide through calls for applications — partnerships with the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Art Explora, etc.
• Very active in 2025-2026.

▸ General schemes of the City of Paris

• The City subsidises the construction and renovation of artists' studios (with or without housing), entrusted to social landlords.
• Montmartre and adjacent neighbourhoods (Nouvelle-Athènes, etc.) still benefit from these programmes.
• Paris Habitat manages in total more than 600 studio-dwellings for artists in its portfolio.

A history that continues

This context explains why in 2026, 34 boulevard de Clichy remains an active creative condominium — almost 90 declared professional entities, artists, art craftsmen, architects, film producers, design agencies. The courtyard-studio is neither a museum nor an official residence; it is what Montmartre has stubbornly protected for a century: a place where one can still, in Paris, rent a studio and work in northern light.

The 34 boulevard de Clichy is very well served: Pigalle station 100 m away (lines 2 and 12), Place de Clichy 640 m away (lines 2 and 13), bus stops 60 m away, Noctilien stations N01 and N02 in immediate proximity.

34 boulevard de Clichy does not stand alone. A direct neighbour of the Bouillon Pigalle (no. 22, 100 metres away), the Moulin Rouge (no. 82, 350 metres away) and the Folies Pigalle (200 metres away on place Pigalle), and at the foot of the Butte Montmartre (Sacré-Cœur, Bateau-Lavoir, Dalida), it is part of the dense network of artists' colonies and historic sites of the neighbourhood. Here are our guides to place no. 34 in its context and to plan a visit to artistic Pigalle.

This investigation draws on primary sources (cadastral records, POPP censuses 1926-1936, Didot-Bottin directories, building permits) and secondary sources (monographs, artists' dictionaries, academic articles, institutional authority records).