View of Paris

In 1886 the fourth floor of 54 rue Lepic gave Van Gogh this view: Paris seen from the hill of Montmartre, roofs and chimneys close enough to count, then the centre of the city thinning into haze. The towers of Notre-Dame are in there, the domes of the Panthéon and the Invalides, and the Opéra. The Eiffel Tower is absent, because work on its foundations began only in January of the following year. On the left stands Le Radet, one of the last windmills left on the hill, in a Montmartre that still had mills and market gardens above a city of stone. Le Radet is standing yet, shifted a short distance in 1915 to a corner of rue Lepic.