Square Louise Michel

Square Louise Michel stretches up the southern slope of the butte Montmartre, defined by a massive, tiered staircase that climbs toward the Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur. This garden occupies the former site of steep, jagged quarries where workers once extracted gypsum for plaster. During the eighteen seventies, the city replaced the unstable debris with these landscaped terraces. Louise Michel, the anarchist and feminist educator who fought on these barricades, now gives the park its name. The heavy stone walls hold back the hillside today.