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Golf-Drouot

Nightclubs in France

The Golf-Drouot was a nightclub located in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. It began its life in 1955 as a tea room with a miniature golf course, hence its name. It wasn't until 1961 that the Golf-Drouot became a nightclub. With increased popularity the club hosted notable artists such as Free, David Bowie and The Who. The club closed in 1981.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Golf-Drouot (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Golf-Drouot
Boulevard des Italiens, Paris 2nd Arrondissement (Paris)

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N 48.8719 ° E 2.3404 °
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Le Phénix

Boulevard des Italiens
75002 Paris, 2nd Arrondissement (Paris)
Ile-de-France, France
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Passage des Panoramas
Passage des Panoramas

The Passage des Panoramas is the oldest of the covered passages of Paris, France located in the 2nd arrondissement between the Montmartre boulevard to the North and Saint-Marc street to the south. It is one of the earliest venues of the Parisian philatelic trade, and it was one of the first covered commercial passageways in Europe. Bazaars and souks in the Orient had roofed commercial passageways centuries earlier but the Passage de Panoramas innovated in having glazed roofing and, later on, in 1817, gas lights for illumination. It was an ancestor of the city gallerias of the 19th century and the covered suburban and city shopping malls of the 20th century. The passage was opened in 1800 on the site of the town residence of the Marechal de Montmorency, Duke of Luxembourg, which had been built in 1704. The doorway of the modern building, of the house, which opened on rue Saint-Marc, facing the rue des Panoramas, was the gateway of the original mansion. Its name came from an attraction built on the site; two large rotundas where panoramic paintings of Paris, Toulon, Rome, Jerusalem, and other famous cities were displayed. They were a business venture of the American inventor Robert Fulton, who had come to Paris to offer his latest inventions, the steamboat, submarine, and torpedo, to Napoleon and the French Directory. While waiting for an answer, Fulton earned money from his exhibition. Napoleon, who had little interest in the navy, finally rejected Fulton's projects. Fulton left behind his Panoramas and went to London to offer his inventions to the British. In 1800, Paris streets were narrow, dark, muddy and crowded, and very few had sidewalks or lighting; they were very unpleasant for shopping. The first indoor gallery, at the Palais Royal, had opened in 1786, followed by the passage Feydau in 1790-91, the Passage du Caire in 1799, and the Passage des Panoramas in 1800. The rotundas were destroyed in 1831. In the 1830s, the architect Jean-Louis Victor Grisart renovated the passage and created three additional galleries inside the block of houses: the Saint-Marc gallery parallel with the passage, the gallery of the Variétés which gives access to the entry of the artists of the Théâtre de Variétés, and the Feydeau galleries and Montmartre. Stern the famous engraver settled there in 1834, then merchants of postcards and postage stamps, and some restaurants moved in. The part of the passage close to the Montmartre boulevard is richly decorated, while the distant part is more modest. The passage, as it was in 1867, is described in chapter VII of Émile Zola's novel Nana.

Théâtre Robert-Houdin
Théâtre Robert-Houdin

The Théâtre Robert-Houdin, initially advertised as the Théâtre des Soirées Fantastiques de Robert-Houdin, was a Paris theatre dedicated primarily to the performance of stage illusions. Founded by the famous magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin in 1845 at No. 164 Galerie Valois as part of the Palais-Royal, it moved in 1852 to a permanent home at No. 8, Boulevard des Italiens. The theatre's later directors, before its demolition in 1924, included Robert-Houdin's protégé Hamilton and the illusionist and film innovator Georges Méliès. When he first founded the theatre, Robert-Houdin was known primarily for his guest appearances as a magician and his clever mechanical inventions. Eager to solidify his work as a stage performer, he leased assembly rooms in the Palais-Royal and had them converted into a small but elegant proscenium theatre auditorium. In setting his stage, Robert-Houdin deliberately set himself apart from conventional stage-magic traditions; he eschewed the usual emphasis on dazzling visual confusion, replacing it with a simple drawing-room look with light furniture in the Style Louis XV. After a rocky start, his theatre gained critical respect, and boomed in popularity with the introduction of Robert-Houdin's mind-reading illusion "Second Sight". In early 1852, Robert-Houdin transferred the theatre's directorship to his former pupil Hamilton (born Pierre Etienne Chocat), who continued its success. At the end of that year, when the lease on the Palais-Royal location ran out, Hamilton moved his operation to a boulevard theatre venue on the Boulevard des Italiens. In its new permanent location, the theatre continued to run for the next few decades, under directors including Cleverman (born François Lahire), Pierre Edouard Brunnet, and Émile Voisin. A drastic refreshing of the theatre's repertoire in the mid-1870s gave it a major financial boost, with the added box-office takings allowing it to start hosting guest artists. However, the boom did not last long, and the theatre was physically run-down and in a serious financial slump by the mid-1880s. In 1888, Georges Méliès took over the lease on the venue. He retained its existing staff but began a thorough revamping, aiming to restore both the theatre's architecture and its repertoire to their former quality. His first major innovation was to conclude each evening's entertainment with a spectacularly staged, lavishly advertised illusion, telling a miniature story complete with original scenery and costumed characters. Méliès's restorations and innovations were a marked success. In 1896, when moving pictures were an emerging novelty, he added film projection to the theatre's repertoire, and even began making his own films to show there and sell elsewhere. Over the next fifteen years, filmmaking became a major part of his career, on top of and overlapping with his work at the theatre. A 1901 fire destroyed most of the venue, but the theatre was rebuilt the same year and continued to present performances with success. At the onset of the First World War, the theatre was closed; Méliès, now severely in debt from a series of filmmaking-related troubles, was unable to keep it going, and sublet it as a full-time cinema. He shut down the venue in 1923, when he sold all his property in an attempt to pay his debts. Paris city planners demolished the theatre the following year to allow for an extension of the Boulevard Haussmann.