| Most of the life of the Montparnasse quartier is concentrated on boulevard du Montparnasse, from the station as far as Vavin métro. Like other Left Bank quartiers, Montparnasse still trades on its association with the wild characters of the interwar artistic and literary boom. Many were habitués of the cafés Select, Coupole, Dôme, Rotonde and Closerie des Lilas, all of which are still going strong on the boulevard – though the prices have gone up since Hemingway noted that "all had good beer and the aperitifs cost reasonable prices that were clearly marked on the saucers". Even by the 1930s, Montparnasse's heyday was passing as the fashionable intelligentsia moved on to St-Germain, but the brasseries remain proudly Parisian classics and this stretch of the boulevard still stays up late. The numerous cinemas here – six on the boulevard alone – are almost all of the multi-screen variety, specializing in mass-market French and US films. The animated part of the boulevard ends at boulevard Raspail, where Rodin's Balzac broods over the traffic, though literary curiosity might take you down as far as the rather swanky brasserie Closerie des Lilas, on the corner of the tree-lined avenue connecting the Observatory and Luxembourg Gardens in a classic grand Parisian vista. Hemingway used to come here to write, and Marshal Ney, one of Napoleon's most glamorous generals, was killed by a royalist firing squad on the pavement outside in 1815. He's still there, waving his sword, immortalized in stone.
Pages in section ‘Boulevard’: Notable buildings around boulevard du Montparnasse and the Montparnasse cemetery.
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