Place du Tertre

This guide to Place du Tertre follows Maurice Utrillo, born on this hill in 1883 to artist's model Suzanne Valadon, who handed her teenage son a brush as therapy for his drinking. It traces how he became obsessed with painting this square and its streets over and over, sometimes from memory or a postcard without ever stepping outside, and how the village's absorption into Paris in 1860 shaped what he was painting. Look for the old mairie building, now a small museum, at number three.