| The south of Pigalle is a relatively quiet quarter and a tad dull, with the exception of some blocks of streets round place St-Georges, where Thiers, president of the Third Republic, lived in a house that's now a library (rebuilt after being burnt by the Commune). In the centre of the place stands a statue of the nineteenth-century cartoonist Gavarni, who made a speciality of lampooning the mistresses that were de rigueur for bourgeois males of the time. This was the mistresses' quartier – they were known as lorettes, after the nearby church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. The cheap rents hereabouts also attracted musicians, painters and writers in the nineteenth century – Chopin, Dumas, Delacroix and George Sand all lived in the area. The Musée de la Vie Romantique at 16 rue Chaptal (daily except Mon 10am–6pm, closed public hols; €4.50 during exhibitions, otherwise free; M° St-Georges, M° Blanche & M° Pigalle), sets out to evoke the Romantic period in what was once the painter Ary Scheffer's abode. The shuttered house itself is a delightful surprise, facing onto a cobbled courtyard at the end of a private alley, while the interior preserves the rich colours of a typical bourgeois home of the nineteenth century. George Sand used to visit here, and the ground floor consists mainly of bits and pieces associated with her, including jewels, locks of hair and a cast of her lover Chopin's surprisingly small hand. Scheffer was art tutor to Louis-Philippe's children, and upstairs are a number of his hideously sentimental aristocratic portraits. Further east, place Toudouze and rues Clauzel, Milton and Rodier are worth a look. Renovation has revealed some beautiful and elegantly ornamented façades. Rue St-Lazare, between the St-Lazare station and the hideous church of Ste-Trinité, is a welcome swath of activity amid the residential calm. Opposite rue de la Tour-des-Dames, where two or three gracious mansions and gardens recall the days when this was the very edge of the city, you'll find the bizarre and little-visited museum dedicated to the fantastical, Symbolist works of Gustave Moreau (daily except Tues 10am–12.45pm & 2–5.15pm; €3.40; M° St-Georges, M° Blanche & M° Pigalle). The museum's design was conceived by Moreau himself, to be carved out of the house he shared with his parents for many years; you can visit their tiny, stuffy apartments crammed with furniture and trinkets. The paintings get more room – two huge, studio-like spaces connected by a beautiful spiral staircase – but the effect is no less cluttered. Moreau's canvases hang cheek-by-jowl, every surface crawling with figures and decorative swirls – literally crawling in the case of The Daughters of Thespius – or alive with deep colours and provocative symbolism, as in the museum's pièce de résistance, Jupiter and Séméle. For all the rampantly decadent symbolism, many viewers haven't been quite convinced. Degas, for one, commented that Moreau was "a hermit who knows the train timetable".
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