| From place Clichy in the west to Barbès-Rochechouart in the east, the hill of Montmartre is underlined by the sleazy boulevards de Clichy and de Rochechouart, the centre of the roadway often occupied by bumper-car pistes and other funfair sideshows. At the eastern Barbès end, where the métro clatters by on iron trestles, the crowds teem round the Tati department store, the cheapest in the city, while the pavements are thick with Arab and African street vendors offering watches, trinkets and textiles. At the place Clichy end, tour buses from all over Europe feed their contents into massive hotels. In the middle, between place Blanche and place Pigalle, sex shows, sex shops and prostitutes, both male and female, vie for the custom of solitaires and couples alike. It's an area in which respectability and sleaze rub very close shoulders. One of the city's most elegant private villas, avenue Frochot leads off place Pigalle itself. In the adjacent streets – rues de Douai, Victor-Massé and Houdon – specialist music shops (this is the area for instruments and sound systems) and grey house facades are interspersed with tiny ill-lit bars where "hostesses" lurk in complicated tackle. Perfectly placed amongst all the sex shops and shows is the Musée de l'Erotisme (daily 10am–2am; €7), testament to its owner's fascination with sex as expressed in folk art. The ground floor and first floor are awash with model phalluses, fertility symbols and intertwined figurines from all over Asia, Africa and pre-Colombian Latin America. The European pieces tend to the satirical or plain smutty, with lots of naughty nuns and priests caught in compromising situations. The rest of the floors upstairs are devoted to temporary exhibitions.
Pages in section ‘Pigalle’: Cabarets and sex shows around Pigalle.
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