Folies Bergère

The Folies Bergère features a wide, ornate marquee that sticks out over the sidewalk, framing the entrance with gold lettering and bold, electric lighting. This music hall opened in eighteen sixty-nine, when Parisian nightlife revolved around lively, shifting variety shows. The venue famously hosted the dancer Josephine Baker in the nineteen twenties, who performed her routine wearing little more than a skirt of artificial bananas. The theater served as the epicenter of French cabaret, drawing audiences into its gilded, crowded auditorium for decades.