Mont-Cenis street, on the top of Montmartre Hill in Paris

The Mont-Cenis street of Montmartre is a steeply sloping road, 1,304 meters long and 12 meters wide,. It begins at the junction of rue Saint-Éleuthère and rue Azaïs in the Montmartre district, runs alongside the Saint-Pierre de Montmartre church near place du Tertre, crosses rue Saint-Vincent, rue Lamarck, place Jules-Joffrin, rue Marcadet, rue Ordener, rue Championnet and boulevard Ornano, and ends in rue Belliard.

A street but also a staircase

It features numerous staircases along the route : 52 between rue Custine and rue Lamarck, 54 between rue Paul-Féval and rue Saint-Vincent, 81 between the latter and rue Cortot.

Its name recalls a rocky massif in the Alps

The very steep route is named since 1868 after Mont-Cenis, a massif in the Northern Alps.

A procession route from the past

Every seven years, at the site of today's Jules Joffrin metro station, representatives of the abbess of Montmartre would come to meet the monks of the Saint-Denis abbey, to accompany them to the top of the butte7. This path was called "chemin de la Procession", then "petite rue Saint-Denis" between rue Norvins and rue Marcadet, and "chaussée Saint-Denis" afterwards.

The bombardment of April 1944

On the night of April 20-21, 1944, during the Occupation of the Second World War, the neighboring La Chapelle rail depot was bombed by Allied aircraft. They also targeted a German anti-aircraft unit on the Butte Montmartre. The surrounding neighborhood was hit.
A witness recounts: "We passed the top of the stairs on rue du Mont-Cenis at the Cortot corner. From there, we could see the flames burning towards Saint-Denis, and as we returned to rue des Saules, it was the plain of Saint-Denis that was burning."