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# History of the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre, from Mill to Dance Hall
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/znamenitaia-melnitsa-monmartra-mulen-de-la-galett-postroennaia-v-1622-godu-i-zapechatlennaia-na-kartinakh-van-goga-tuluz-lotreka-i-renuara-sushchestvuet-po-sei-den/
- Published: 2023-12-04T11:02:10.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:40:27.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Architecture, Mores, Paris

The celebrated Montmartre windmill Moulin de la Galette, built in 1622 and immortalised in paintings by Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir, stands to this day. Moulin is French for "mill". To be sure, if the nineteenth-century owners of the milling complex are to be believed, a mill had stood here since 1295\. In the 1800s there were some 30 windmills on Montmartre; by the middle of the century only 3 remained, all of them the property of the Debray family.

In the 1830s Sunday dances were started in the mill yard, and crowds began to gather here from all over Paris. From three in the afternoon until nightfall merriment reigned: cutlets, milk and galettes were served, the latter giving their name to one of the Debray mills. By the middle of the nineteenth century, when Montmartre was still a village, only just beginning to expand and build itself up, and one had to travel there from Paris by train, the mill had become a favourite gathering place for merrymakers, no less emblematic than the Moulin Rouge in the neighbouring district. At different times it housed a drinking den, a tavern and a restaurant; the modest dancing ground in the farmyard grew into a ballroom with stucco, palms and great chandeliers, while the upper part of the mill became a popular viewing platform with a prospect over the whole of Paris.

After Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris, thousands of people flooded into Montmartre wishing to settle there, and unbuilt plots grew fewer and fewer; rural buildings gave way to urban ones, and before long the mills no longer ground flour, pepper or stone, yet still welcomed artists, musicians and writers in the shade of their sails.

Beneath the Moulin de la Galette, moved from its original site, there is a restaurant even today

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_10584@04-12-2023_14-02-10.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_10585@04-12-2023_14-02-10.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_10586@04-12-2023_14-02-10.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_10587@04-12-2023_14-02-10.jpg)