Place du Tertre, St-Pierre and the Sacré-Cœur
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Sacre-Coeur

The heart of Montmartre, the place du Tertre, photogenic but totally bogus, is jammed with tourists, overpriced restaurants and "artists" knocking up lurid oils of Paris landmarks from memory. Its trees, once under threat of destruction for safety reasons by overzealous officialdom, have been saved by the well-orchestrated protests of its influential residents.

Similar protests early in the twentieth century saved the church of St-Pierre, between place du Tertre and the Sacré-Coeur, which was due to be replaced by St-Jean de Montmartre. St-Pierre, which rivals St-Germain-des-Prés for the title of oldest church in Paris, is all that remains of a Benedictine convent that occupied the Butte Montmartre from the twelfth century onwards. Though much altered, with modern stained glass throughout, it still retains its Romanesque and early Gothic feel. The four ancient columns inside the church, two by the door and two in the choir, are probably leftovers from the Roman shrine that stood on the hill, and their capitals date from Merovingian times, as does the cemetery outside.

Crowning the Butte is the Sacré-Cœur (daily 6am–10.30pm; M° Abbesses & M° Anvers), a weird pastiche of a Byzantine style whose pimply tower and white ice-cream-dome has somehow become an essential part of the Paris skyline. Construction was started in the 1870s on the initiative of the Catholic Church to atone for the "crimes" of the Commune. The thwarted opposition, which included Clemenceau, eventually got its revenge by naming the space at the foot of the monumental staircase square Willette, after the local artist who turned out on inauguration day to shout "Long live the devil!" The interior is more neo-Byzantine nonsense, and the best thing about the Sacré-Cœur is the view from the top (daily 8am–6.30pm; €5). It's almost as high as the Eiffel Tower, and you can see the layout of the whole city – a wide, flat basin ringed by low hills, with stands of high-rise blocks in the southeastern corner, on the heights of Belleville, and at La Défense in the west. The tall tower-block in the middle of the city is the Tour Montparnasse and beyond, in the hazy distance, are the high flat faces of southern suburban cités.