Artistic-Athévains

You are standing before what is now the Artistic Théâtre, a building that has continuously reinvented itself to match the changing appetites of the eleventh arrondissement. Its story began around the dawn of the twentieth century as a humble cafe-concert, a type of venue where working-class Parisians gathered to drink and enjoy musical performances. By the nineteen-twenties, it had transformed into the Artistic Concert, a stage for revues and vaudeville, before taking on the identity of a neighborhood cinema named the Artistic Voltaire in nineteen-thirty-five. For decades, it flickered with silver-screen projections until it finally shuttered its doors in the late nineteen-seventies, appearing nearly ruined before it was rescued to begin its current life as a home for live theater.