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CULTURE

Ten must-visit places in the Paris theatre district

A hard to define but thriving part of Paris is becoming more and more popular with visitors and foreign residents in the City of Light. Here are 10 places in the French capital's so-called theatre district that are well worth a visit.

Published: 9 October 2017 17:11 CEST
Ten must-visit places in the Paris theatre district
Photo: Theatre in Paris
One of the most overlooked, but best sources of entertainment for expats and tourists alike in Paris is the city's booming theatre scene. 
 
While the French capital's so-called theatre district isn't a formally defined area, it extends all the way from Opéra up to the République Metro station. 
 
Indeed it covers parts of the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th arrondissements. Here Theatre In Paris, which has opened up the theatre scene to non-French speakers by providing subtitles for shows, spell out 10 places in the district that are really worth a visit.
 
Harry’s New York Bar

(AFP)

Before catching a show, stop at this American style bistro quite literally from New York: the interior of the Manhattan bar was packed up and shipped over to the City of Light in the early 1900s.

As for its clientèle over the years, you might find yourself in the very seat where Coco Chanel or even Ernest Hemingway once relaxed. If you’re looking for ambiance, it’s ideal; the perfect ‘at home’ feeling for American expats, and an unmistakable sense of art and history à la Midnight in Paris. Do yourself a favour and try the Pimm’s Royal, you won’t regret it.

Square and Théâtre Edouard VII

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Built in honour of English King Edward the 7th, famous for his love for Paris (and French women), this venue has seen them all: Orson Welles, Eartha Kitt, Picasso, even Meryl Streep… it was built to celebrate Anglo-Franco friendship and showcase “Anglo-Saxon” cinema and theatre. It makes sense then, that English speakers can book shows here with English subtitles through www.theatreinparis.com. “Peacemaker” King Edward VII would be proud!

Théâtre Mogador 

(AFP)

If you’re an architecture buff, this is a must-see of the 9th arrondissement. Currently hosting Grease the Musical with English Subtitles this venue is slightly more modern, but just as jaw-dropping as some of the city's older buildings. Prestigious English ‘theatre architect’ Bertie Crewe designed this venue, along with numerous other breathtaking theatres all over Europe such as the Hoxton Hall, the Royal Hippodrome, the London Opera House (or the Stoll Theatre), and so many more. The Théâtre Mogador has always been dedicated to grandiose musical shows, such as Cats, Beauty and the Beast and Les Miserables.

Musée du Parfum Fragonard

(Photo: (Nico Paix/Flickr)

In a Napoleon III style boutique hotel designed by a student of Charles Garnier, who designed the Opera Garnier, is a luxurious perfume museum, featuring the scents of the Fragonard Perfume House.

For those who’ve hit just about every museum in Paris, this is a sweet alternative dedicated to pleasing two of the five senses, with its splendid decor and fragrances. The Perfume Museum will tell you how natural scents are mixed with fats and other substances to create the perfumes we wear today, and displays striking Lalique and Schiaparelli bottles, as well as Ancient Egyptian ointment flasks and porcelain scent bottles.

Théâtre Trévise 

This is a venue where you’ll find a flock of young French artists and theatre lovers (and probably hipsters). The Théâtre Trévise is a late 19th century building in Paris’ 9th arrondissement which showcases French humorists and young talent. There’s a subtitled show now playing called I Love Piaf, which stars the Voice France star Karoline Rose, who embodies the French icon in a modern way. 

Musée de la vie Romantique

(Photo: (Ottavi Alain/Flickr)

An ideal blend of romance and culture: this museum tucked away in the 9th arrondissement of Paris is dedicated to arts. It has played host to the works of Chopin, Rousseau and Delacroix and it comes with a romantic, picturesque garden. Originally owned by Ary Scheffer, a prominent Dutch painter in the early 1800s who was close to King Louis Philippe I, the museum holds numerous collections from the romantic era, as well as memorabilia of novelist and memoirist George Sand, known for her literary prowess, her romantic side, and her affairs with Chopin and Musset.

Théâtre des Variétés

(Photo: DotConferences/Flickr)

A theatre that owes its entire existence to one very audacious woman: Royal Theatre Director Mademoiselle Montasier, or Marguerite Bruno. Her auspicious troupe of actors was dismissed from the Palais Royal’s theatre (at the time called Les Variétés), supposedly in part due to a large debt she had acquired.
 
She obtained an audience, luckily, with Napoleon III himself, who rectified the situation, putting her troupe back in business and giving her a theatre of her own: today’s Théâtre des Variétés. The venue gained some fame in 1880 thanks to  Émile Zola's book “Nana”. Indeed, during the first few chapters of the book, the main character's rise to fame occurs in the Théâtre des Variétés. 

Théâtre Splendid

(AFP)

A lush theatre in the 10th arrondissement,  where the highest paid female performer of the Belle Epoque, Minstinguett, got her big break. The Théâtre Splendid was formerly a café théâtre.

Maison Souquet:

Probably the most risqué hotel in the City of Lights, the Maison Souquet is a former Belle Epoque Brothel, and was restored into this original boutique hotel whose sexy side is accentuated with sensual art, a private bar, and mood lighting to get anyone feeling in the mood…

Théâtre de la Porte St Martin: 

This venue marks the end of the Paris entertainment district and was commissioned by Queen Marie Antoinette herself. It was also built in just two short months. Molière’s Tartuffe will soon be playing here, among many other French shows. (source)

While visitors to Paris might previously have declined a visit to a Parisian theatre in the past, the revolutionary surtitling at various venues in Paris’ entertainment district is changing that.

More and more shows with Theatre in Paris are being surtitled, and therefore made accessible to Anglophone art lovers visiting or living in the City of Light.

For more information visit Theatre in Paris.

The Paris theatre scene - now open for expats too

 

 

 

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CULTURE

How many of France’s ’10 most iconic women’ can you name?

Ten monumental golden statues representing French women from the worlds of art, literature, sport and politics are shortly to go on display in Paris - but how many of these famous names do you recognise?

Published: 18 September 2024 15:34 CEST
How many of France's '10 most iconic women' can you name?

They were one of the early highlights of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, emerging from the River Seine near the Alexandre-III bridge as the flotilla of boats carrying international athletes passed.

Now golden status of the 10 famous women have been made and are on display in Cour d’honneur of the French National Assembly until October 5th, while more permanent homes for them are discussed. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo hopes to install them along rue de La Chapelle in the 18th arrondissement.

It will go some way towards closing that statuery gap – there are currently around 260 statues of men in the French capital, and just 40 women.

This temporary free exhibition will enable visitors to admire these polymer resin sculptures, created by 3D printing and designed to withstand the elements, by registering in advance on the Assemblée nationale website.

But, who are the women they celebrate and honour? Some might be familiar to international readers while others are barely known outside France.

Christine de Pizan (1364-1431) 

The oldest of the inspirational women remembered at the Olympic Games’ Opening Ceremony by some distance.

De Pizan was France’s first woman of letters, the first woman to earn a living as a writer. 

She started her career in the court of King Charles VI, following the deaths of her father and husband in rapid succession, leaving the family – she had three children – without a traditional source of income.

Her works were forgotten for several centuries, but resurfaced in the 1980s thanks to the rise of feminist studies – and, today, she is revered as one of history’s earliest feminists. Her most famous work, La cité des dames (The City of Ladies), clinically dismantles patriarchal discrimination and misogyny.

Jeanne Barret (1740-1807)

Explorer and botanist Barret was born into poverty in rural Burgundy – and went on to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, while working as a ‘valet’ to doctor and botanist Philibert Commerson. 

At the time, the French navy banned women from their vessels, so she had to undertake the journey around the world in disguise, and was known as Jean. Her tireless work – she took charge of an expedition in Brazil when Commerson was unfit to work – earned her the respect of the crew and the expedition’s captain Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.

She and Commerson kept her true identity – and their relationship – secret for a year. In fact, such was his respect for her that Bougainville, after whom the botanist had named a plant, later wrote to King Louis XVI and requested that she be honoured with the title femme extraordinaire.

Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793)

Playwright, activist, abolitionist, disheartened revolutionary – feminist icon de Gouges is best known for her  Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen), written in scathing response to the Revolutionary Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen and demanding full legal, political and social assimilation of women.

She also wrote in favour of the abolition of slavery, and was initially in favour of the 1789 Revolution – but grew disenchanted by the lack of progress of women’s rights in its aftermath. 

De Gouges was executed by guillotine in 1793, after writing repeated literary attacks on the regime and leader Maximilien Robespierre.

Louise Michel (1830-1905)

If ever you see anarchists raise a black flag during a protest, remember Louise Michel – the teacher, anarchist and leading light of the Paris Commune, a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris from 18th March to 28th May, 1871.

She was transported to Nouvelle-Caledonie in punishment for her role in the Commune. There, she took up the plight of the indigenous Kanak people, taking their side in a revolt in 1878. 

In 1880, amnesty was granted to those who had participated in the Paris Commune. Michel returned to Paris, her revolutionary passion undiminished. And she proudly waved a black flag at a jobless demonstration in Paris in March 1883 – it is, historians say, the first use of the modern anarchists’ symbol.

Alice Guy (1873-1968)

French cinema remembers the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis. It remembers the visionary Georges Méliès, and early directors Marcel Pagnol and Jean Renoir – the son of the artist. And it honours Godard, Truffaut and Rohmer. The list of male cineastes in France is long.

Alice Guy routinely gets lost in the shuffle. She shouldn’t. She was the first woman to direct a film – La Fée aux choux in 1896; one of the first to make a movie with a distinct narrative; and, for a decade between 1896 to 1906, was probably the only female filmmaker in the world.

Guy was a cinema pioneer in many ways. She experimented with Gaumont’s Chronophone sync-sound system, colour-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects. 

Her Hollywood film A Fool and His Money – made with a wholly African-American cast – is considered to have historical and aesthetic significance and is preserved at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute.

And her 1906 33-minute film La vie du Christ, which tells the story of Jesus Christ in 25 tableaux based on the gospels, is sometimes cited as the first ‘epic’ movie. As was the case with many Guy  films, it was for a long time wrongly attributed to Victorin Jasset – her assistant in charge of directing exterior scenes and managing the extras.

Alice Milliat (1884-1957)

There’s still a vast distance to travel, but women’s sport might not even be where it is today without Milliat. 

While noted misogynist Pierre de Coubertin – he once famously said that a woman’s role at the Olympic Games should be to crown the winners – gets all the Olympic glory, Milliat was responsible for getting the men-only club to, finally, allow women to compete.

She founded the Fédération Française Sportive Féminine in 1917. She helped organise the 1922 Women’s World Games – which were originally called the Jeux Olympiques Féminins and which ran for four editions until 1934, and which prompted the International Olympic Committee to slowly and belatedly allow female competition.

She also managed a French women’s association football team that toured the United Kingdom in 1920. In 2021, a commemorative statue of Milliat was unveiled at the French Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Paris.

Paulette Nardal (1896-1985)

Journalist, activist, woman of letters and pioneer of ‘black intellectualism’, Nardal, who was born in Martinique, was also the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne.

In October 1931, she founded the journal La Revue du Monde Noir (Review of the Black World) with her sisters; French novelist Louis Jean Finot; Haitian scholar Léo Sajous; and Clara W Shepard, an African-American teacher and translator. 

On her return to Martinique in 1944, Nardal founded Le Rassemblement féminin. Le Rassemblement féminin, one of two feminist organisations at the time whose goals were to increase the number of women who voted in the 1945 elections.

Then, from 1946 to 1948 Nardal was a delegate to the United Nations, working with both the UN Department for Non-Autonomous Territories and the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

De Beauvoir’s 1949 work The Second Sex is considered a “trailblazing work in feminist philosophy”, and is a foundation work of modern feminism. 

But she considered herself a writer rather than a philosopher. She won the 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1961, 1969 and 1973.

More controversially, she lost a teaching job amid accusations of inappropriate behaviour and she and long-time partner Jean-Paul Sartre campaigned for the release of people convicted of child sex offences.

Simone Veil (1927-2017)

Simone Veil survived Auschwitz and later Bergen-Belsen and went on to become one of France’s most respected politicians, steering through landmark laws to liberalise contraception and abortion.

She is best known for leading the successful campaign to legalise abortion in France – despite vicious abuse and threats – as the country’s first female minister of health in 1975. 

Veil later became the first female president of the European Parliament, where she served for three years, before returning to work for the French government again.

She was given an honorary damehood from the British government, and awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion D’Honneur in France. She died in 2017, and became just the fourth women to be interred in the Parthenon, after scientist Marie Curie, and two resistance fighters Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion.

In 2021, Josephine Baker was also honoured at the Parthenon, nearly half a century after her death.

Gisèle Halimi (1927-2020)

“Politics is too serious a matter to be left to men alone.” Tunisian-born lawyer, feminist activist and co-founder of equality movement Choisir la cause des femmes said that in 1978. 

In early 1972, a year after Choisir was founded, Halimi successfully defended a teenager who was on trial for illegally aborting a pregnancy after she had been raped in the Parisian suburb of Bobigny.

The teenager’s mother and three others were also charged with conspiring to commit the illegal abortion.

It was a landmark case that paved the way for Simone Veil to persuade France’s parliament to legalise abortions in France two years later.

In 1981, Halimi was elected as an MP, where she was a vociferous campaigner for the abolition of the death penalty, and tabled bills promoting women’s rights.

Four years later, she was appointed Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of France to UNESCO, and, in 1989, she was appointed special advisor to the French delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York.

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