Formerly Square Adolphe Willette until 2004, named after a typical Montmartre painter who decorated many of the establishments on the Butte. It was not long before it was remembered that in 1889 he stood as the only "anti-Semitic candidate" in the legislative elections. This was an opportunity to rename the square after Louise Michel, a Commune fighter and Montmartre schoolteacher.

Louise Michel

Louise Michel is the best-known female figure of the Paris Commune. Born on 29 May 1830 in Vroncourt to a squire and a servant girl, she became a teacher and set up her own schools to escape her oath to the Emperor.

At the end of the Second Empire, she became president of the Comité de vigilance des citoyennes du 18^e arrondissement, then joined the National Guard. On 18 March, she took an active part in the Montmartre cannon affair, which marked the start of the Paris Commune. During the Commune, she was a member of the 61^st marching battalion and took part in the battles of Clamart, Issy-les-Moulineaux and Neuilly. During the bloody week, she fought in the Montmartre cemetery and on the barricades in rue Joseph De Maistre, Place Blanche and Chaussée Clignancourt. On learning that her mother had been arrested in her place, she was taken prisoner.

Deported to New Caledonia, she supported the indigenous Canaques and the Kabyle people deported from Algeria. Refusing the partial amnesty of 1879, she waited for the general amnesty in July 1880 and returned to Paris to tirelessly pursue her revolutionary activism.

She died on 9 January 1905 in Marseille, on her way back from a lecture tour of Algeria.

Commemorative plaque

In March 2021, an "Allée de l'Ile-des-pins" pedestrian walkway was created, starting on the right at the entrance to the square on the rue Muller and runs alongside rue Ronsard as far as place Saint-Pierre. A plaque commemorating the presence of the Communards in New Caledonia has been affixed at the entrance to the allée de l'Île-des-Pins. (photo)

Émile Derré (1867 - 1938)

In the Square Louise Michel (at the foot of the stairs on the funicular side, which can be reached via the alley running up the left-hand side of the Square Louise Michel), there is a discreet work by Emile Derré entitled "La fontaine des innocents" ("The Fountain of the Innocents"). Derré is known for having created numerous statues of Louise Michel, including the bust installed on her tomb in the Levallois-Perret cemetery. Also in Levallois-Perret, a beautiful full-length statue of Louise Michel, placing a protective hand on the head of a child. He also designed a capital known as La colonne des baisers, in which two of the kisses are given by Louise Michel. This monument, which was for a long time in the Luxembourg Gardens, is now in Roubaix.