Inside the Moulin Rouge on Paris's Boulevard de Clichy

Inside 82 Boulevard de Clichy

MOULIN ROUGE is spelled in red letters across the front of the building, with the big fairground elephant on the garden sign beside it. 'Féerie' is the house show, and it fills both performances.

Seating is shared and bench-style. A half-bottle of champagne comes with the show-only ticket, and you drink it at the table you are given. The room was built for parties of six to 20, and the house also takes group and corporate bookings and whole-room private events.

Photography and filming are banned inside, and the staff enforce it. Leave the phone in your pocket.

Tickets and the door

The show with a half-bottle of champagne starts at €87 at the 23:00 performance. The same ticket for 21:00 is €119. Dinner and show starts at €185, and the Belle Époque menu is €230.

Book your seats in advance. The guided evenings built around the cabaret run seven days a week and fill up.

The door enforces elegant dress and turns away shorts and trainers.

Best time to go

Take the 21:00 performance if you want to eat in the room, and arrive for the 19:00 dinner service. Take the 23:00 performance to eat up on the hill first and walk down to Boulevard de Clichy for the curtain.

Thursday to Saturday gives you the most around the show, including the chanson room on rue des Saules and the club nights on rue Pierre Fontaine. Use the daylight hours for the hill and keep the evening for the boulevard.

Is it worth the ticket

It suits a visitor who wants one set-piece evening on a fixed timetable, booked ahead and dressed for. In return you accept the dress code, a table shared with strangers and a performance you cannot record.

Dinner on rue Lepic and rue Norvins

Le Moulin de la Galette (83 rue Lepic) keeps the surviving wooden Blute-fin windmill on its stone tower above a green-trimmed terrace, on Renoir's dance-garden site. Mains run €25 to €40, and the set menus cost more. It opens daily and the kitchen runs late, so this is the easiest sit-down dinner that still gets you to Boulevard de Clichy on time. Book the table ahead for anything over six.

Café des Deux Moulins (15 rue Lepic) has a yellow-and-red 1950s brasserie front with a neon windmill over the door. The long mirrored bar runs down one side, and the old tobacco counter from 'Amélie' is still in place. Crème brûlée and plats sit in the €10 to €20 range. Doors are open 07:00 to 02:00 daily, and there are pavement tables when the narrow room fills.

Le Consulat (18 rue Norvins) is the cream corner café with the deep red awning and the hand-painted lettering, bentwood chairs out on the cobbles just below Place du Tertre. Onion soup, escargots and plats land between €15 and €28. The food is tourist-standard. Come for the terrace and the corner.

The hour before curtain

Studio 28 (10 rue Tholozé) is two streets from the windmill, a single-screen cinema from 1928 with Cocteau-designed light fittings along the walls and red seats in front of the screen. Tickets cost €8 to €11, and the doors are open daily from 14:30 to 23:00. There is one auditorium, so a group simply buys seats together. The lantern-lit garden bar at the back can be booked for events.

Cité Véron (off 92 Boulevard de Clichy) is 30 seconds from the ticket queue, and almost nobody turns in. The cul-de-sac measures 2.5 metres wide and 80 metres long, with ivy, shutters and quiet cobbles under the back wall of the cabaret's own theatre. Boris Vian lived at 6 bis until 1959 and shared a terrace over the cabaret with Jacques Prévert, and both apartments were secured for preservation in an agreement reached in December 2025. There is no door and no charge. It is a residential lane, so go in twos and threes.

The hill above the windmill

Musée de Montmartre (rue Cortot) is the indoor stop that explains what the Moulin Rouge was. The Lautrec and Chat Noir poster material is here, in a 17th-century white manor house behind an iron gate. Renoir's garden holds a green swing and roses, Valadon's studio has been reconstructed, and the terrace looks down on the Clos Montmartre vines.

Entry is €22 full and €10 reduced. Ages 10 to 17 pay €8, and under-10s go free. The gardens alone cost €5. It opens daily, 10:00 to 19:00, and groups book a slot with the option of a guided visit.

Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre is ten minutes uphill from the windmill, white travertine domes over the hill with a golden mosaic Christ in the apse. Entry to the church is free and unticketed for any size of party, 06:30 to 22:30. The steps outside give you the whole grey-and-zinc skyline.

The dome climb costs €8 for adults and €5 for under-16s. It is 300 steps up a narrow spiral, single-file all the way, with the last entry at 17:00. Skip it if stairs or tight spaces bother you.

La Maison Rose (2 rue de l'Abreuvoir) is the pink-rendered corner house with green shutters and a green door, on cobbles curving away downhill. It has been here since 1908, at a Picasso-era address. Plates and lunch dishes run €18 to €30. It closes Mondays and Tuesdays. Expect a queue of photographers at the most photographed wall on the hill, and small tables inside that will split a larger booking.

A smaller room on rue des Saules

Au Lapin Agile (22 rue des Saules) is a tiny pink-and-green cottage under an acacia, with the painted sign of a rabbit leaping out of a saucepan. Inside is a cramped red room with a piano and 60 people elbow to elbow. The songs are old French ones, Piaf and drinking choruses, with no feathers and no spectacle.

It runs Tuesday and Thursday to Saturday, 21:00 to 01:00. Entry is €35 to €40 including one drink. A €25 student rate runs some nights. It is cash only. Small groups get in by email request in advance, and the room cannot absorb a coach party.

After the show

La Machine du Moulin Rouge (90 Boulevard de Clichy) is the black industrial club on the same pavement, the old Locomotive, three floors stacked above a raw brick vaulted basement called La Chaufferie. Techno, hardcore and pop gigs run to 06:00 under lasers, on a dancefloor that gets slick with sweat, and the programming stays heavy through autumn 2026. Door and advance tickets cost €15 to €30. Nights are general admission and no table is needed, with a guestlist for larger parties.

Bus Palladium (6 rue Pierre Fontaine) closed in 2022 and reopened on 10 April 2026 as a club, a restaurant and a hotel. The 1960s rock room is back in the basement with its low stage, a five-star 35-room hotel above it and a small rooftop at the top. Club nights run Thursday to Saturday, 23:00 to 05:00. Entry is €15 to €25, and the restaurant, bar and rooftop take bookings and private events.

Dirty Dick (10 rue Frochot) kept the old Pigalle hostess-bar sign over its door, one of the recycled sleaze-era signs around here. Inside, bamboo and carved tiki idols sit under puffer-fish lamps, and rum arrives in ceramic skulls. Doors open at 18:00 and cocktails cost €13 to €16. It takes no reservations, it is loud, and up to about eight people can stand together early in the night.

Lulu White (12 rue Frochot) is a dark green and brass drinking club with marble-topped tables, dripping absinthe fountains and jazz-era portraits under low lamplight. The bar takes absinthe seriously and serves it in flights with water or syrups, the drink of the cabaret's own poster era. Cocktails and flights cost €14 to €18, and the room opens at 20:00.

Le Très Particulier (23 avenue Junot) is behind a gate on the quiet side of the hill, a glass-walled bar in a 19th-century mansion with red velvet, graphic tiling, big exotic plants and a walled garden terrace. Drinks run 18:00 to 02:00 and cocktails cost €18 to €22. Seating is open and you do not need to book for a drink.

Before you go

Check the closed days before you fix a date, and book the show, a dinner table and the chanson room in advance. See the Paris guide and the Paris hotel search.