Folies Bergère, a music hall on rue Richer since 1869

The Folies Bergère opened on 2 May 1869 at 32 rue Richer, in the 9th arrondissement: a 1,200-seat hall created by the theatre director Louis Montrouge on the site of a bedding shop. The name comes from the nearby rue Bergère, and audiences watched operettas and songs while drinking and smoking.

Manet painted A Bar at the Folies-Bergère here in 1882, and Zola and Maupassant set scenes of their novels in it. In 1886 Édouard Marchand invented the grand music-hall revue and hired Loïe Fuller. Colette appeared as a mime, and in 1936 Josephine Baker returned from New York to lead the revue En super folies.

Paul Derval ran the house from 1918 to 1966 and had it enlarged in 1926, when Maurice Pico designed the Art Deco façade, its relief portraying the dancer Lila Nikolska. Hélène Martini took over in 1974. The Lagardère group bought the hall in 2011 and had the relief gilded again.

Listed as a historic monument since 1990, the Folies Bergère now hosts musicals and concerts, with guided tours of the auditorium and backstage.