Montmartre Walking Tour:

About The I Love You Wall: Just steps from the Abbesses Metro Station is the truly romantic I Love You Wall in the leafy Jehan Rictus Square.  The iconic I Love You Wall was installed in 2000 by artists Fédéric Baron and Claire Kito, but it is far more than a trendy Instagram location.  Made up of 612 tiles covering 40 square meters (430 sq ft), the beautiful deep blue wall has ‘I Love You’ written 311 times in 250 different languages.  A part from English and French, some of our favorite reiterations of the phrase is displayed in Navajo, Sign Language, and Braille.  It proves that love, above all, is the universal language.

A hidden secret about the I Love You Wall in Paris is that the artwork also holds a contrasting metaphor.  If you take a step back, you’ll notice 40 bursts of red accents throughout the I Love You Wall.  Each of these red pieces symbolizes a broken heart and when fit together forms a complete heart once again.  We find the art installation and the surrounding park to be a refreshing alcove of peace and the perfect place to start our free Montmartre walking tour.

While the I Love You Wall is the main draw to the Jehan Rictus Square today, it previously held the town hall of Montmarte from 1837 to 1882.  It is a reminder that the neighborhood essentially ran as its own commune on the outskirts of Paris and we’ll see the original Montmarte town hall (built in 1790) later on this walking tour.   When Jehan Rictus Square opened as a park in 1936, it was named after the pseudonym that famous local author Gabriel Randon de Saint-Amand wrote under.  He was a bit of an anarchist who penned populous poems and songs about Parisian social life including its cabarets.

The park is an oasis of fruit trees and roses bushes where it can be easy to miss the Art Nouveau-style Church of Saint-Jean de Montmartre sitting in its southwest corner. Although it has a red brick facade, when it was completed in 1904, the church became the first to be built using reinforced concrete.  The steel accents of the exterior will remind you of Paris’ playful metro entrances.  The playfulness continues inside the church where the concrete forms an interesting lattice-like design filled with stained glass windows.

Park Hours: Monday-Friday 8am-Dusk, Saturday & Sunday 9am-Dusk.  Closing time varies each month but is essentially dusk.  Church Hours: Daily from 9am-6:30pm with tours at 4pm on the 4th Sunday of each month.