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My idea of a pleasant walk in Montmartre

I hope that you have enjoyed reading about the walk, even if you you are not planning to go to Paris or Montmartre. Thanks for taking the time to visit the site.

I researched and wrote all of the content; I took the photographs (except those from the Wikimedia Commons as indicated), just as most people do with a simple smartphone camera (a Motorola E3); I did the infographics, I drew the directions and indicated the points of interest on the maps (from OpenStreetMap.org). I translated the Mayor of Paris’ historical information panels, I even drank the coffee in the cafés. This is a WordPress site and the theme used for the layout is GeneratePress.

The route itself is my idea of a pleasant walk in Montmartre. You have to let your imagination wander a bit but in Montmartre that is not so difficult. The artists would have walked about a lot, especially before some of them sold, so you are seeing and experiencing something similar.

Viewing the site offline

If you are sitting in a café then you can sign into the internet; whilst walking around Montmartre you will be offline. In order to view the text of the site as you follow the route you’ll need to be able to view the site offline.

Probably the easiest way to do this is to download Pocket. Pocket allows you to sync web-pages when online to other devices for example a smartphone or a tablet so that they can be read when you are offline. Make sure that you save the page to Pocket on the device that you will be using for the walk.

Whilst Pocket is easy to use and very good it does have some drawbacks. In the interests of minimising data downloads it tends to strip out images and stifle formatting. If you use Pocket you will get all of the text available for consultation offline but not the maps, which, for the purposes of this guided walk is a drawback.

Use the download feature on Google Chrome in order to see all images

I’ve taken care to resize and compress images so that downloads should be rapid and light on data. This means that if for example you download each of the pages on the site using Chrome as shown here, then the entire site will only take up 19.19 MB which is only 0.01919 GB. To put that into context, my modest smartphone has 4.84 GB of storage available for downloads.

The Google Chrome download will make all images and maps on each of the pages available. Because this site is a point to point self-guided walk, having the maps and images available for orientation is essential.

I would recommend downloading each of the pages with Chrome and then being able to get the full benefit of maps and photos as you progress round the circuit. Here are some links on how to do the same thing using other browsers:

Six Ways to Read and Download Websites Offline.

How to Add Websites to an iPhone or iPad to View Offline.

Making a Website Available for Offline Viewing (Microsoft).

Read Pages Later and Offline (Google Chrome).

OpenStreetMap.org

I have used maps from the OpenStreetMap.org which, in the original collaborative sharing spirit of the internet, allows adaptation and publishing. These detailed maps on which I have traced the outline of the route, directions and particular points of interest should make following the circuit easy.

OpenStreetMap® is open data, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). The cartography and documentation, are licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (CC BY-SA).

The personalised symbols and keys to the maps I have produced for the walk are my own; if you have any difficulty understanding these then that is my fault and has nothing to do with OpenStreetMap.org. My thanks to OpenStreetMap.org and its contributors.

Best practice SEO principles

Best practice SEO principles guide the content. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a creative and technical process that aims to match user intent with relevant content. The idea is to get you closer to your customer or audience by ranking for pertinent queries within your sphere. Quality content engages the user, is helpful, gains trust and establishes common cause.

Gaining insight about searcher intent from Google results

I’ve used the data from the Google search engine results pages, in order to get insight into the kind of intent that Google understands to be behind searcher queries associated with walking tours in Montmartre. I then considered where in the results that intent is positioned.

Gaining those insights helps to be competitive in the Google rankings because: (a) your content is more likely to be convergent with the kind of information people are seeking; and (b) you have an idea of the kinds of pages Google is ranking. Knowing which pages rank tells you something about what Google is ‘thinking’ (its perception of searcher intent), when searchers type a query into Google’s search box on the subject of a walking tour in Montmartre.

Visit the museums, read the books

Most of the information I relay about Montmartre and the walk and the paintings is not original. This information is freely available in published books or from websites. I hope that I have been able to assemble it in a readable and entertaining way.

Principal sources:

Here are the principal sources I looked at:

History:

Alfred Cobban: A History of Modern France Vols 2 and 3, Penguin.

Alistair Horne: Seven Ages of Paris, Pan Macmillan.

Michel Winock La Belle Epoque, Editions Perrin.

Montmartre:

Jean-Paul Caracalla: Montmartre: Gens et légends, La Table Ronde.

Olivier Renault: Montmartre: Les lieux de légend, Parigramme. This book is the principal source of reference for Montmartre. The book is only available in French.

Jeanine Warnod: Le Bateau Lavoir, Editions Mayer

Artists:

Cézanne: Richard Verdi, Thames and Hudson.

Degas: Catalogues d’exposition, Exposition Giverny Musée des impressionismes, Gallimard.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Catalogues raisonnés, Exhibition at Hayward Gallery London 1992.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Images of the 1890s Edited by Riva Castleman & Wolfgang Wittrock, MOMA 1985.

Picasso-Matisse: Pierre Daix, Ides et Callendes.

Principal related websites are:

The Art Story

BBC Culture

The Khan Academy

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum of Modern Art

The Orsay Museum

The Smithsonian

The Tate Galleries

The van Gogh Museum

Wikipedia and many more newspaper and other articles available online.

Films:

Waldemar Januszczak, ZCZ Films: Features on Manet and Toulouse Lautrec.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation):

The Moz Blog from the content marketing and SEO software company Moz is the best place to keep up to date with SEO and the Beginners Guide to SEO from Moz is the best place to start.

Contact

I’d be interested in constructive feedback you may have especially about any difficulties on the wheelchair route.

You can contact me, David Macmillan, with this form.

Thanks for your feedback.