Montparnasse [key], quarter of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine River, centering on the intersection of the Boulevard de Montparnasse and the Boulevard Raspail. Its famous cafés (the Dôme, the Rotonde, the Coupole, and others) were long centers of the Parisian artistic and intellectual world. During the first part of the 20th cent. Montparnasse was home to a number of expatriate modern artists, e.g., Picasso, Soutine, Chagall, and Modigliani. The quarter contains the Pasteur Institute, ancient catacombs, and the Montparnasse cemetery with the tombs of Saint-Saëns, Houdon, Baudelaire, Poincaré, César Franck, Maupassant, and Leconte de Lisle.
See S. Meisler, Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse (2015).
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