Moulin Rouge

Moulin Rouge (French for "red mill") is a traditional cabaret, built in 1889 by Joseph Oller who already owned the Paris Olympia. Situated in the red-light district of Pigalle on Boulevard de Clichy in the 18th arrondissement, near Montmartre, Paris, France, it is famous for the large red imitation windmill on its roof. The Moulin Rouge is a symbol of French Culture as well as the Bohemian influence on Western Europe. The building has a rich history that is still being added to today. Over the past hundred years, the Moulin Rouge has remained a popular tourist destination for many visitors each year. Today the Moulin Rouge offers musical dance entertainment for adult visitors from around the world. Much of the romance from turn-of-the-century France is still present in the interior environment.

Contemporary description

Andrey Bely wrote in his 1906 letter to Alexander Blok about the Tavern of Hell at Moulin Rouge, where lackeys were dressed as devils:

Related Topics:
Andrey Bely - 1906 - Alexander Blok

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Sometimes I would venture from my sepulchre to the jazz of night Paris, where having gathered the colours, I would think them over in front of the fire. I could be seen walking through a funereal corridor of my house and descending down a black spiral of steep stairs; rushing underground to Montmartre, all impatience to see the fiery rubies of the Moulin Rouge cross. I wondered thereabouts, then bought a ticket to watch frenzied delirium of feathers, vulgar painted lips and eyelashes of black and blue.

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Naked feet, and thighs, and arms, and breasts were being flung on me from bloody-red foam of translucent clothes. The tuxedoed goatees and crooked noses in white vests and toppers would line the hall, with their hands posed on canes. Then I found myself in a pub, where the liqueurs were served on a coffin (not a table) by the nickering devil: "Drink it, you wretched!" Having drunk, I returned under the black sky split by the flaming vanes, which the radiant needles of my eyelashes cross-hatched. In front of my nose a stream of bowler hats and black veils was still pulsing, foamy with bluish green and warm orange of feathers worn by the night beauties: to me they were all one, as I had to narrow my eyes for insupportable radiance of electric lamps, whose hectic fires would be dancing beneath my nervous eyelids for many a night to come.

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