meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
The Earful Tower: Paris

Montmartre: The old village of a thousand facelifts

The Earful Tower: Paris

Oliver Gee

Places & Travel, Society & Culture, Arts

4.8796 Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2026

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

New episode: Let's take a deeper dive into the 18th arrondissement of Paris. You've hopefully already heard the previous episode, where Sutanya Dacres shared her thoughts on the 18th Kingdom. 

In this brand new episode, I re-visited the 18th and did some exploring with my wife, and with Earful Tower's senior tour guide Hannah Coyle, who regularly walks the streets of Montmartre. Hannah shared her thoughts on everything from gentrification to rue des Abbesses, my old favourite street. 

This episode brought to you by The Earful Tower Tours. Come join us in Montmartre (!!) or Marais, or the Latin Quarter. Our Walking Tours are now award winning, and are the best way to experience this podcast in real life. Why not meet Hannah in Montmartre!

The Earful Tower exists thanks to support from its members. For just $10 a month you can unlock almost endless extras including bonus podcast episodes, live video replays, special event invites, and our annually updated PDF guide to Paris. 

Membership takes only a minute to set up on Patreon, or Substack. Thank you for keeping this channel independent. 

For more from the Earful Tower, here are some handy links:

Website 

Weekly newsletter 

Walking Tours
Music: Pres Maxson

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey everyone, it's Oliver here with a little sort of bonus new episode about the 18th hour on this month.

0:08.7

You know in France, when you like live at number 18 of a certain street, whatever number,

0:16.7

and there's like a little second house or apartment.

0:20.3

And in English you'd say he lives at 18B or 18A.

0:23.7

In French they say B's, B-I-S.

0:26.6

So this episode is like an 18-B's because it's just a little extra episode.

0:30.9

And the reason is, as I've done with the other districts as we're counting down through

0:35.0

them, this first episode earlier in the

0:38.0

week with Satania talking about the sort of the other side of the hill in the 18th. I wanted to go

0:45.3

see some stuff myself in the 18th. I wanted to have a little look around my old hood and, you know,

0:53.7

obviously we run walking tours in Montmartre as well so i figured it could be a cool

0:58.6

chance to go and revisit my old favorite street rue desabes with my main tour guide for montmart which is

1:05.9

hannah coil and so uh we noticed a lot of new places had opened. She wanted to talk about that a little bit.

1:13.5

And we picked one, well, she picked one, a cafe right in the middle of that very street.

1:19.5

So Rue des Abès, my opinion, still a wonderful street, totally worth seeing.

1:24.5

Let's hear what a tour guide, like Irish Hannah Coil, has to say about a street

1:31.1

that she walks so often she sees it changing in front of her very eyes. So you hear us talking now

1:37.3

with the sound of Montmartin in the background, and then I went for a walk with later

1:41.6

afterwards discovering a few more things that I'll add

1:44.6

to the Eiffel Tower Guide and to various social media this week.

1:49.2

And yeah, I will say if you're looking for a cool new coffee shop, a shout out,

1:55.5

not necessarily to the one that we went to, but there's one called Bonn, or Bonner, maybe, B-O-N-N-E.

...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 18 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Oliver Gee, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Oliver Gee and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.