Paris Digest
Paris city guide since 1997
Moulin de la Galette, the last windmill of Montmartre, was made famous by the 1876 painting of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, now in Musee d'Orsay in Paris. A guinguette when Renoir painted it, it now houses a French restaurant with a courtyard.
The Moulin de la Galette is a windmill near the top of the typical Montmartre hill in Paris. Nineteenth-century owners, the Debray family, made a brown bread, called galette, which became popular and gave its name to the windmill.
The windmill was associated with a guinguette and restaurant. In the 19th century, it represented a welcome diversion for Parisians seeking entertainment, a glass of wine and bread made from flour ground by the windmill.
Le Moulin de la Galette is close to Place du Tertre and Sacre Coeur. See it on our Montmartre walk. It is now a good French restaurant. You can see the interior of the mill over the bar. Locate Moulin de la Galette on Montmartre map. Paris metro: Abbesses (line 12) and Anvers (line 6).
Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette by Pierre-Auguste Renoir is one of Impressionism's celebrated masterpieces. It depicts a typical Sunday afternoon at the Moulin. In the late 19th century, working class Parisians would dress up and spend time there dancing, drinking, and eating into the evening. The painting is now in Musee d'Orsay. Moulin de la Galette is also the title of several paintings of the windmill made by Vincent van Gogh in 1886. The Moulin de la Galette was near the apartment in Montmartre where the pennyless Vincent Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo.
