The _hôtel_ at No. 79 is on the site of the Château d'hiver, where the Revolutionists of Montmartre had their club. No. 88 was the dancing-saloon known as the Bossu. No. 76 that of the Marronniers. Rue Antoinette shows us points of interest of another nature. At No. 9, in the couvent des Dames Auxiliatrices du Purgatoire, we see the very spot on which there is reason to believe St. Denis and his companions suffered martyrdom. An ancient crypt is there, unearthed in the year 1611, to which we are led down rough steps, beneath a chapel built on the site in 1887; we see a rude altar and above it words in Latin to the effect that St-Denis had invoked the name of the Holy Trinity on that spot. The crypt is no doubt a vestige of the chapel built on the site by Ste-Geneviève. It was in this chapel, not as is sometimes asserted higher up the _Butte_, that Ignatius Loyola and his six companions, on August 15, 1574, made the solemn vow which resulted in the institution of the Order of the Jesuits. The chapel was under the jurisdiction of the "Dames de Montmartre," and after the great fire at the abbey the nuns sought refuge in the old chapel here, made it a priory. Several persons of note were buried there. At the Revolution it was knocked to pieces and remained a ruin until rebuilt by the abbé Rebours in 1887.
Leaving this interesting spot and passing through Rue Tardieu, we reach Place St-Pierre, formerly known as Place Piemontési, and go on through Rue Foyatier to the ancient Rue St-Eleuthère, once in part of its length Rue du Pressoire, a name recalling the abbey winepress on the site of the reservoir we see there now. Thus we come to Rue Mont-Cenis, the ancient Chaussée St-Denis, and in part of its course, Rue de la Procession, referring to the religious processions of those bygone days. And here we see before us the most ancient of Paris churches, St-Pierre de Montmartre. It dates from the first years of the ninth century, built on the site of an earlier chapel or several successive chapels, the first one erected over the ruins of a pagan temple. Four black marble pillars from the ruins of that temple were used for the Christian church: we see them there to-day, two at the west door, two in the chancel. We see there, too, ancient tombstones, one that of Adelaide de Savoie, foundress of the abbey, for the Choir des Dames was the abbey chapel, and there the abbesses were buried. The old church was threatened with destruction after the desecration of 1871, when it was used as a munition _dépôt_. Happily it has been saved and in recent years restored. The façade is eighteenth-century work, quite uninteresting as we see, but the view of the east end from without, the apse, the old tower and the simply severe Gothic interior, are strikingly characteristic. The cross we see in front of the church was brought here from an old cemetery near. The garden adjoining, with the Calvaire set up there in 1833, was in ancient days the nun's graveyard. The cemetery on the northern side dates from the time of the Merovingian kings.