Culture of Paris

The culture of Paris concerns the arts, music, museums, festivals and other entertainment in Paris, the capital of France. The city is today one of the world's leading business and cultural centres; entertainment, music, media, fashion, and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world's major global cities.

Paris is also home to notable cultural attractions such as the Louvre, Musée Picasso, Musée Rodin, Musée du Montparnasse, and Musée National d'Art Moderne. The Musée d'Orsay and Musée de l'Orangerie are notable for housing Impressionist era masterpieces, while art and artifacts from the Middle Ages can be seen in Musée Cluny.

A variety of landmarks and objects are cultural icons associated with Paris, such as Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame de Paris and Opéra Garnier. Many of Paris's once-popular local establishments have come to cater to the tastes and expectations of tourists, rather than local patrons. Le Lido, the cabaret-dance hall, for example, is a staged dinner theater spectacle, a dance display that was once but one aspect of the cabaret's former atmosphere. All of the establishment's former social or cultural elements, such as its ballrooms and gardens, are gone today. Much of Paris's hotel, restaurant, and night entertainment trades have become heavily dependent on tourism.

Painting and sculpture

Main article: Art in Paris

Auguste Renoir, Bal du moulin de la Galette, 1876, oil on canvas, 131 cm × 175 cm (52 in × 69 in), Musée d'Orsay

For centuries, Paris has attracted artists from around the world. As a result, Paris has acquired a reputation as the "City of Art". Italian artists were a profound influence on the development of art in Paris in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in sculpture and reliefs. Painting and sculpture became the pride of the French monarchy, and the French royal family commissioned many Parisian artists to adorn their palaces during the French Baroque and Classicism era. Sculptors such as Girardon, Coysevox, and Coustou acquired reputations as the finest artists in the royal court in 17th-century France. Pierre Mignard became the first painter to King Louis XIV during this period. In 1648, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) was established to accommodate the dramatic interest in art in the capital. This served as France's top art school until 1793.

Paris was in its artistic prime in the 19th century and early 20th century, when it had a colony of artists established in the city and in art schools associated with some of the finest painters of the times: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and others. Paris was central to the development of Romanticism in art, with painters such as Géricault. Impressionism, Art Nouveau, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism and Art Deco movements all evolved in Paris. In the late 19th century, many artists in the French provinces and worldwide flocked to Paris to exhibit their works in the numerous salons and expositions and make a name for themselves. Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Rousseau, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and many others became associated with Paris.

The most prestigious sculptors who made their reputation in Paris in the modern era are Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (Statue of Liberty), Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel, Antoine Bourdelle, Paul Landowski (statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro) and Aristide Maillol. The Golden Age of the School of Paris ended between the two world wars.

Museums

Main article: List of museums in Paris

Musée d'Orsay

The Louvre received 2.8 million visitors in 2021, up from 2.7 million in 2020, holding its position as first among the most-visited museums. Its treasures include the Mona Lisa (La Joconde), the Venus de Milo statue, and Liberty Leading the People. The second-most visited museum in the city in 2021, with 1.5 million visitors, was the Centre Georges Pompidou, also known as Beaubourg, which houses the Musée National d'Art Moderne The third most visited Paris museum in 2021 was the National Museum of Natural History with 1,4 million visitors. It is famous for its dinosaur artefacts, mineral collections, and its Gallery of Evolution. It was followed by the Musée d'Orsay, featuring 19th-century art and the French Impressionists, which had one million visitors. Paris hosts one of the largest science museums in Europe, the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie (984,000 visitors in 2020), and one of the oldest, the Musée des Arts et Métiers (opened in 1794). The other most-visited Paris museums in 2021 were the Fondation Louis Vuitton (691,000), the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, featuring the indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. (616,000); the Musée Carnavalet (History of Paris) (606,000), and the Petit Palais, the art museum of the City of Paris (518,000).

Musée du quai Branly

The Musée de l'Orangerie, near both the Louvre and the Orsay, also exhibits Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, including most of Claude Monet's large Water Lilies murals. The Musée national du Moyen Âge, or Cluny Museum, presents Medieval art. The Guimet Museum, or Musée national des arts asiatiques, has one of the largest collections of Asian art in Europe. There are also notable museums devoted to individual artists, including the Musée Picasso, the Musée Rodin, and the Musée national Eugène Delacroix.

The military history of France is presented by displays at the Musée de l'Armée at Les Invalides. In addition to the national museums, run by the Ministry of Culture, the City of Paris operates 14 museums, including the Carnavalet Museum on the history of Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Palais de Tokyo, the House of Victor Hugo, the House of Balzac and the Catacombs of Paris. There are also notable private museums. The Contemporary Art museum of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, designed by architect Frank Gehry, opened in October 2014 in the Bois de Boulogne.

Theatre

The largest opera houses of Paris are the 19th-century Opéra Garnier (historical Paris Opéra) and modern Opéra Bastille; the former tends toward the more classic ballets and operas, and the latter provides a mixed repertoire of classic and modern. In the middle of the 19th century, there were three other active and competing opera houses: the Opéra-Comique (which still exists), Théâtre-Italien and Théâtre Lyrique (which in modern times changed its profile and name to Théâtre de la Ville). Philharmonie de Paris, the modern symphonic concert hall of Paris, opened in January 2015. Another musical landmark is the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where the first performances of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes took place in 1913.

The Comédie Française (Salle Richelieu)

Theatre traditionally has occupied a large place in Parisian culture, and many of its most popular actors today are also stars of French television. The oldest and most famous Paris theatre is the Comédie-Française, founded in 1680. Run by the Government of France, it performs mostly French classics at the Salle Richelieu in the Palais-Royal. Other famous theatres include the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, also a state institution and theatrical landmark; the Théâtre Mogador; and the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse.

The music hall and cabaret are famous Paris institutions. The Moulin Rouge was opened in 1889 and became the birthplace of the dance known as the French Cancan. It helped make famous the singers Mistinguett and Édith Piaf and the painter Toulouse-Lautrec, who made posters for the venue. In 1911, the dance hall Olympia Paris invented the grand staircase as a setting for its shows, competing with its great rival, the Folies Bergère. Its stars in the 1920s included the American singer and dancer Josephine Baker. Later, Olympia Paris presented Dalida, Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich, Miles Davis, Judy Garland and the Grateful Dead.

The Casino de Paris presented many famous French singers, including Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier and Tino Rossi. Other famous Paris music halls include Le Lido, on the Champs-Élysées, opened in 1946; and the Crazy Horse Saloon, featuring strip-tease, dance, and magic, opened in 1951. A half dozen music halls exist today in Paris, attended mostly by visitors to the city.

Literature

Main article: Writers in Paris

Victor Hugo

The first book printed in France, Epistolae ("Letters"), by Gasparinus de Bergamo (Gasparino da Barzizza), was published in Paris in 1470 by the press established by Johann Heynlin. Since then, Paris has been the centre of the French publishing industry, the home of some of the world's best-known writers and poets, and the setting for many classic works of French literature. Paris did not become the acknowledged capital of French literature until the 17th century, with authors such as Boileau, Corneille, La Fontaine, Molière, Racine, Charles Perrault, several coming from the provinces, as well as the foundation of the Académie française. In the 18th century, the literary life of Paris revolved around the cafés and salons; it was dominated by Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pierre de Marivaux, and Pierre Beaumarchais.

During the 19th century, Paris was the home and subject for some of France's greatest writers, including Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Mérimée, Alfred de Musset, Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant and Honoré de Balzac. Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame inspired the renovation of its setting, the Notre-Dame de Paris. Another of Victor Hugo's works, Les Misérables, described the social change and political turmoil in Paris in the early 1830s. One of the most popular of all French writers, Jules Verne, worked at the Theatre Lyrique and the Paris stock exchange, while he did research for his stories at the National Library.

In the 20th century, the Paris literary community was dominated by figures such as Colette, André Gide, François Mauriac, André Malraux, Albert Camus, and, after World War II, by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Between the wars, it was the home of many important expatriate writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, and Arturo Uslar Pietri. The winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, Patrick Modiano, based most of his literary work on the depiction of the city during World War II and the 1960s–1970s.

Paris is a city of books and bookstores. In the 1970s, 80 percent of French-language publishing houses were found in Paris. It is also a city of small bookstores. There are about 150 bookstores in the 5th arrondissement alone, plus another 250 book stalls along the Seine. Small Paris bookstores are protected against competition from discount booksellers by French law; books, even e-books, cannot be discounted more than five percent below their publisher's cover price.

Music

Main articles: Music in Paris and History of music in Paris

Olympia music hall

In the late 12th century, a school of polyphony was established at Notre-Dame. Among the Trouvères of northern France, a group of Parisian aristocrats became known for their poetry and songs. Troubadours, from the south of France, were also popular. During the reign of François I, in the Renaissance era, the lute became popular in the French court. The French royal family and courtiers "disported themselves in masques, ballets, allegorical dances, recitals, and opera and comedy", and a national musical printing house was established. In the Baroque-era, noted composers included Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and François Couperin. The Conservatoire de Musique de Paris was founded in 1795. By 1870, Paris had become an important centre for symphony, ballet, and operatic music.

Romantic-era composers (in Paris) include Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod, Camille Saint-Saëns, Léo Delibes and Jules Massenet, among others. Georges Bizet's Carmen premiered 3 March 1875. Carmen has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical canon. Among the Impressionist composers who created new works for piano, orchestra, opera, chamber music and other musical forms, stand in particular, Claude Debussy, Erik Satie and Maurice Ravel. Several foreign-born composers, such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Jacques Offenbach, Niccolò Paganini, and Igor Stravinsky, established themselves or made significant contributions both with their works and their influence in Paris.

Bal-musette is a style of French music and dance that first became popular in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s; by 1880, Paris had some 150 dance halls. Patrons danced the bourrée to the accompaniment of the cabrette (a bellows-blown bagpipe locally called a "musette") and often the vielle à roue (hurdy-gurdy) in the cafés and bars of the city. Parisian and Italian musicians who played the accordion adopted the style and established themselves in Auvergnat bars, and Paris became a major centre for jazz and still attracts jazz musicians from all around the world to its clubs and cafés.

Paris is the spiritual home of gypsy jazz in particular, and many of the Parisian jazzmen who developed in the first half of the 20th century began by playing Bal-musette in the city. Django Reinhardt rose to fame in Paris and performed with violinist Stéphane Grappelli and their Quintette du Hot Club de France in the 1930s and 1940s.

The Moulin Rouge has hosted many singers including Parisian Édith Piaf

Immediately after the war, the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter and the nearby Saint-Michel quarter became home to many small jazz clubs, including the Caveau des Lorientais, the Club Saint-Germain, the Rose Rouge, the Vieux-Colombier, and the most famous, Le Tabou. They introduced Parisians to the music of Claude Luter, Boris Vian, Sydney Bechet, Mezz Mezzrow, and Henri Salvador. Most of the clubs closed by the early 1960s, as musical tastes shifted toward rock and roll.

Some of the finest manouche musicians in the world are found here playing the cafés of the city at night. Some of the more notable jazz venues include the New Morning, Le Sunset, La Chope des Puces and Bouquet du Nord. Several yearly festivals take place in Paris, including the Paris Jazz Festival and the rock festival Rock en Seine. The Orchestre de Paris was established in 1967. December 2015 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Édith Piaf—widely regarded as France's national chanteuse and one of France's greatest international stars.

Paris has a big hip hop scene. This music became popular during the 1980s.

Cinema

See also: List of films set in Paris

Poster for the Lumière brothers 1895 film L'Arroseur Arrosé, the earliest comedy, and the first film to portray a fictional story.

The movie industry was born in Paris when Auguste and Louis Lumière projected the first motion picture for a paying audience at the Grand Café on 28 December 1895. Many of Paris's concert/dance halls were transformed into cinemas when the media became popular beginning in the 1930s. Paris's largest cinema room today is in the Grand Rex theatre with 2,700 seats. Big multiplex cinemas have been built since the 1990s. UGC Ciné Cité Les Halles, with 27 screens, MK2 Bibliothèque with 20 screens, and UGC Ciné Cité Bercy with 18 screens are among the largest.

Parisians tend to share the same movie-going trends as many of the world's global cities, with cinemas primarily dominated by Hollywood-generated film entertainment. French cinema comes a close second, with major directors (réalisateurs) such as Claude Lelouch, Jean-Luc Godard, and Luc Besson, and the more slapstick/popular genre with director Claude Zidi as an example. European and Asian films are also widely shown and appreciated.

Restaurants and cuisine

See also: French cuisine

Le Zimmer, on the Place du Châtelet

Since the late 18th century, Paris has been famous for its restaurants and haute cuisine, food meticulously prepared and artfully presented. A luxury restaurant, La Taverne Anglaise, opened in 1786 in the arcades of the Palais-Royal by Antoine Beauvilliers; it became a model for future Paris restaurants. The restaurant Le Grand Véfour in the Palais-Royal dates from the same period. The famous Paris restaurants of the 19th century, including the Café de Paris, the Rocher de Cancale, the Café Anglais, Maison Dorée and the Café Riche, were mostly located near the theatres on the Boulevard des Italiens. Several of the best-known restaurants in Paris today appeared during the Belle Époque, including Maxim's on Rue Royale, Ledoyen in the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, and the Tour d'Argent on the Quai de la Tournelle.

Today, owing to Paris's cosmopolitan population, every French regional cuisine and almost every national cuisine in the world can be found there; the city has more than 9,000 restaurants. The Michelin Guide has been a standard guide to French restaurants since 1900, awarding its highest award, three stars, to the best restaurants in France. In 2018, of the 27 Michelin three-star restaurants in France, ten are located in Paris. These include both restaurants which serve classical French cuisine, such as L'Ambroisie, and those which serve non-traditional menus, such as L'Astrance, which combines French and Asian cuisines. Several of France's most famous chefs, including Pierre Gagnaire, Alain Ducasse, Yannick Alléno, and Alain Passard, have three-star restaurants in Paris.

Les Deux Magots café on Boulevard Saint-Germain

Paris has several other kinds of traditional eating places. The café arrived in Paris in the 17th century, and by the 18th century, Parisian cafés were centres of the city's political and cultural life. The Café Procope on the Left Bank dates from this period. In the 20th century, the cafés of the Left Bank, especially Café de la Rotonde and Le Dôme Café in Montparnasse and Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots on Boulevard Saint Germain, all still in business, were important meeting places for painters, writers and philosophers. A bistro is a type of eating place loosely defined as a neighbourhood restaurant with a modest decor and prices and a regular clientele, and a congenial atmosphere. Real bistros are increasingly rare in Paris, due to rising costs, competition, and different eating habits of Parisian diners. A brasserie originally was a tavern located next to a brewery, which served beer and food at any hour. Beginning with the Paris Exposition of 1867, it became a popular kind of restaurant which featured beer and other beverages served by young women in the national costume associated with the beverage. Now, brasseries, like cafés, serve food and drinks throughout the day.

Photography

The inventor Nicéphore Niépce produced the first permanent photograph on a polished pewter plate in Paris in 1825. In 1839, after the death of Niépce, Louis Daguerre patented the Daguerrotype, which became the most common form of photography until the 1860s. The work of Étienne-Jules Marey in the 1880s contributed considerably to the development of modern photography. Photography came to occupy a central role in Parisian Surrealist activity, in the works of Man Ray and Maurice Tabard. Numerous photographers achieved renown for their photography of Paris, including Eugène Atget, noted for his depictions of street scenes, Robert Doisneau, noted for his playful pictures of people and market scenes (among which Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville has become iconic of the romantic vision of Paris), Marcel Bovis, noted for his night scenes, as well as others such as Jacques-Henri Lartigue and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Poster art also became an important art form in Paris in the late nineteenth century, through the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret, Eugène Grasset, Adolphe Willette, Pierre Bonnard, Georges de Feure, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Paul Gavarni and Alphonse Mucha.

Fashion

Main article: Fashion in Paris

Magdalena Frackowiak at Paris Fashion Week (Autumn 2011)

Louis Vuitton flagship store on the Champs-Élysées in Paris

Paris has long been an international hub of fashion design. Paris is the original home of haute couture, and has long set the trends for fashion in Europe; it remains the second largest industry in France, and is heavily regulated and supported by the government "for its economic and tourist value". The city has produced many notable design houses, such as Chanel, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Chloé, Givenchy, Balenciaga, Lanvin, Céline, Hermès, and Louis Vuitton. Paris also remains a premier destination for shopping, with streets such as Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and the Champs-Élysées hosting boutiques from designers around the world. The city is generally considered to be part of the "big four" global fashion capitals, alongside Milan, London and New York City, and in 2011, the Global Language Monitor ranked Paris as the world's third top fashion capital.

In addition to fashion and leather goods, Paris is home to a number of well-known jewelers, such as Cartier, Boucheron, Chaumet, and Van Cleef & Arpels. These and other jewelers have their flagships at the famed Place Vendôme.

Perfume and cosmetics are yet another fashion-related enterprise associated with Paris. Coty, Chanel, Helena Rubenstein, L'Oreal, Lancôme, Kérastase, Clarins, Sephora, and many other worldwide brands are based in Paris. French women are the biggest consumers of these products in the world (spending on average around $290 each year), and France is the world's largest exporter of perfume and cosmetics, a $91 billion per year industry.

Paris is home to a fashion week twice a year, where the city's fashion houses present their collections. Additionally, designers from other countries may present their collections in Paris. Notable examples include Belgian designers Dries van Noten, Martin Margiela, and Ann Demeulemeester; Dutch design duo Viktor & Rolf; and Japanese designers Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, and Junya Watanabe.

The two major holding companies in contemporary fashion and luxury, Kering and LVMH, are both headquartered in Paris.

Media

Founded in 1826, Le Figaro is still considered a newspaper of record.

Paris and its close suburbs are home to numerous newspapers, magazines and publications including Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Canard enchaîné, La Croix, Le Parisien (in Saint-Ouen), Les Échos, Paris Match (Neuilly-sur-Seine), Réseaux & Télécoms, Reuters France, l'Équipe (Boulogne-Billancourt) and L'Officiel des Spectacles. France's two most prestigious newspapers, Le Monde and Le Figaro, are the centrepieces of the Parisian publishing industry. Agence France-Presse is France's oldest, and one of the world's oldest, continually operating news agencies, and is headquartered in Paris. France 24 is a television news channel owned and operated by the French government, and is based in Paris. France Diplomatie, owned and operated by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, pertains solely to diplomatic news and occurrences.

The most-viewed network in France, TF1, is in nearby Boulogne-Billancourt. France 2, France 3, Canal+, France 5, M6 (Neuilly-sur-Seine), Arte, D8, W9, NT1, NRJ 12, La Chaîne parlementaire, France 4, BFM TV, and Gulli are other stations located in and around the capital. Radio France, France's public radio broadcaster, and its various channels, is headquartered in Paris's 16th arrondissement. Radio France Internationale, another public broadcaster is also based in the city. Paris also holds the headquarters of the La Poste, France's national postal carrier.

Holidays and festivals

Bastille Day, a celebration of the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the biggest festival in the city, is a military parade taking place every year on 14 July on the Champs-Élysées, from the Arc de Triomphe to Place de la Concorde. It includes a flypast over the Champs Élysées by the Patrouille de France, a parade of military units and equipment, and a display of fireworks in the evening, the most spectacular being the one at the Eiffel Tower.

Other yearly festivals include Paris-Plages, a festive summertime event when the Right Bank of the Seine is converted into a temporary beach; Journées du Patrimoine, Fête de la Musique, Techno Parade, Nuit Blanche, Cinéma au clair de lune, Printemps des rues, Festival d'automne, and Fête des jardins. The Carnaval de Paris, one of the oldest festivals in Paris, dates back to the Middle Ages.

Libraries

Main article: Libraries in Paris

The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) operates public libraries in Paris, among them the François Mitterrand Library, Richelieu Library, Louvois, Opéra Library, and Arsenal Library.

Sainte-Geneviève Library

The Bibliothèque Forney, in the Marais district, is dedicated to the decorative arts; the Arsenal Library occupies a former military building, and has a large collection on French literature; and the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, also in Le Marais, contains the Paris historical research service. The Sainte-Geneviève Library, designed by Henri Labrouste and built in the mid-1800s, contains a rare book and manuscript division. Bibliothèque Mazarine is the oldest public library in France. The Médiathèque Musicale Mahler opened in 1986 and contains collections related to music. The François Mitterrand Library (nicknamed Très Grande Bibliothèque) was completed in 1994 to a design of Dominique Perrault and contains four glass towers.

There are several academic libraries and archives in Paris. The Sorbonne Library is the largest university library in Paris. In addition to the Sorbonne location, there are branches in Malesherbes, Clignancourt-Championnet, Michelet-Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie, Serpente-Maison de la Recherche, and Institut des Etudes Ibériques. Other academic libraries include Interuniversity Pharmaceutical Library, Leonardo da Vinci University Library, Paris School of Mines Library, and the René Descartes University Library.

Architecture

Main article: Architecture of Paris

Avenue de l'Opera by Camille Pissarro, showing buildings from Haussmann's renovation of Paris

Haussmann's renovation of Paris during the mid-19th century created many of its wide boulevards and characteristic multi-level housing, often with shops and cafes at the ground level. The purpose of the renovations was to replace crowded, dilapidated Medieval-era housing, but some areas, such as the Marais, were untouched by the renovation of Paris. Other notable landmarks erected during the 19th century feature elaborate Art Nouveau designs popular during the Belle Époque, such as the Palais Garnier (Paris Opera) and the Galeries Lafayette shopping centre.

The city's cathedrals are another main attraction; its Notre-Dame de Paris and the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur receive twelve million and eight million visitors, respectively.

The Eiffel Tower, by far Paris's most famous monument, averages over six million visitors per year and more than 200 million since its construction.

Modern landmarks of Paris architecture include the Centre Georges Pompidou, which officially opened on 31 January 1977, and the Louvre Pyramid designed by I. M. Pei, completed in 1989.

Recreation

Disneyland Resort Paris is a major tourist attraction not only for visitors to Paris but for visitors to the rest of Europe as well, with 14.5  million visitors in 2007.

The Parc Astérix is the other major amusement park located around Paris.

Festivals and events

Paris Plages (Paris Beaches) along the Seine

Paris's annual Bastille Day celebrations take place on 14 July. Along with this national celebration, Paris has a number of other Summer events. Paris Plage is an annual tradition since 2002, seeing three beaches, complete with sand and a theme, built along the Seine. The open-air cinema at the Parc de la Villette is a hugely popular event with Parisians. The Bois de Boulogne city park also features outdoor theatre performances at its Jardin Shakespeare (Shakespeare garden).

Several yearly festivals take place in Paris, such as Rock en the Seine, a celebration of rock and pop music. The Paris Jazz Festival centres on concerts at the Bois de Vincennes park in the eastern part of the city. The Paris Summer Arts Festival brings free music, dance, art, and other cultural events to the streets of the city. La Goutte d'Or en Fête held the first week of July, is a rap and reggae music festival. Every September, a Techno Parade takes place from Place de la République to Pelouse de Reuilly.

Paris's Hotel de Ville (City Hall) during Nuit Blanche 2010

Film festivals held in Paris take place in the Fall, and include the Festival Paris Cinéma, Festival de Films des Femmes (Women's Film Festival), as well as the Festival du Film de Paris. Nuit Blanche (White Night), a celebration of art, food, and culture, takes place overnight as an annual event in October, the same month as the Paris Motor Show. Also held in October is the Foire Internationale d'art contemporain (International Contemporary Art Fair), or FIAC. The Fête des Vendanges de Montmartre, celebrating the wine harvest, takes place at the Montmartre vineyards in early October. The International Dance Festival is also an October event. Mois de la Photo is a month-long series of photography exhibits around the city every November. Fête du Beaujolais Nouveau, celebrating the new annual wine vintage, is on the third Thursday of November.

Winter has its share of popular annual traditions, including Christmas celebrations; La Grand Parade to celebrate New Year's Day; the Chinese New Year, celebrated in the 13th arrondissement. February is the traditional Paris Carnival, whose history stretches back to the Middle Ages. Late February or early March sees Paris hosting the annual Paris International Agricultural Show. March is enlivened with the Foire de Paris, celebrating food and wine around the city. The Foire du Trone tradition of outdoor fairs comes to the city in April.

In June, St. John's Day (Feux de la Saint-Jean) is celebrated at Parc de la Villette, and Foire St-Germain brings poetry performances and music to the city. The Paris Street Music Festival is held every 21 June, while the annual Gay Pride Day is 24 June.

The Biennale de Paris, founded in 1959, supports the work of contemporary artists and cultural critics.

Sports and athletics

A match underway at the French Open at Stade Roland Garros

Sports events that take place annually include several types of sport. The Paris Marathon, along with the London Marathon and the Berlin Marathon, is one of Europe's most popular, and is held each April. The French Open of Tennis is held at the end of May and beginning of June at Stade Roland Garros. The most popular event in horse racing in France is the Grand Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, held every October at Longchamp at the Bois de Boulogne. The Tour de France concludes each Summer as cyclists reach the finish line on the Champs-Elysees.

Professional Clubs

Name	Sport	Division	Stadium	Founded
Paris Saint-Germain	Football	League 1	Parc des Princes
Stade Français Paris	Rugby	Top 14	Stade Charléty	1883
Racing Métro 92	Rugby	Top 14	Stade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir	1882
Paris-Levallois Basket	Basketball	LNB Pro A	Stade Pierre-de-Coubertin	2007
Paris Saint Germain Handball	Handball	Division 1	Stade Pierre-de-Coubertin	2012
Paris Volley	Volleyball	Pro A	Salle Charpy	1998

External links

• Paris Nightlife
• Paris Nightlife (in French)