La Comédie Italienne

You are standing in front of La Comédie Italienne, a small theater that serves as the only institution in France dedicated entirely to Italian plays. While the street it sits on, Rue de la Gaîté, is historic for its theater culture, this specific building once housed a local police station before it was repurposed into a performance space in 1980. Its founder, Attilio Maggiulli, transformed the former government office into an intimate venue seating only about one hundred people. The theater maintains its unique mission by exclusively staging works by Italian authors, though all performances are delivered in the French language.