10 Facts About Montparnasse

Montparnasse is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail.

Montparnasse became famous in the 1920s, referred to as les Annees Folles, and the 1930s as the heart of intellectual and artistic life in Paris.

In post-World War I Paris, Montparnasse was a euphoric meeting place for the artistic world.

Montparnasse was a community where creativity was embraced with all its oddities, each new arrival welcomed unreservedly by its existing members.

Cafes and bars of Montparnasse were a meeting place where ideas were hatched and mulled over.

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The cafes at the centre of Montparnasse's night-life were in the Carrefour Vavin, now renamed Place Pablo-Picasso.

Rue de la Gaite in Montparnasse was the site of many of the great music-hall theatres, in particular the famous "Bobino".

Wealthy socialites like Peggy Guggenheim, an art collector who married artist Max Ernst, lived in the elegant section of Paris but frequented the studios of Montparnasse, acquiring pieces that would come to be recognised as masterpieces that now hang in the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy.

Musee du Montparnasse opened in 1998 at 21 Avenue du Maine and closed in 2015.

The Gallery of Montparnasse was one of the first to introduce abstract expressionism in France in the 1940s, and still holds contemporary art exhibitions today.