Moulin Rouge
— — the red windmill that never stops turning.
Not only on a wall.
“A red wooden windmill on the corner of Boulevard de Clichy and Rue Lepic, at the foot of Montmartre. It has stood there since 1889, the year the Eiffel Tower opened, and the cancan has been danced inside almost every night since. Toulouse-Lautrec drew its dancers in lithograph. Édith Piaf sang here. The building burned in 1915 and came back. The sails turn through the Pigalle traffic, slow and lit from inside, the way they have for more than a hundred and thirty winters. from the studio
Moulin Rouge, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Moulin Rouge stands at 82 Boulevard de Clichy in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, on the southern edge of Montmartre and a short walk from Place Pigalle. It opened on 6 October 1889, the same year as the Universal Exposition that brought the Eiffel Tower to the city. Co-founded by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller, who also built the Olympia music hall, it became the home of the modern cancan and the subject of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's most famous lithographs. The original building burned down in 1915 and was rebuilt in 1921; the current red windmill on the roof is the surviving signature.
At night the windmill is lit in deep red, its four sails outlined against the sky above Pigalle. The current revue, Féerie, has played twice a night since 1999, and the show carries on roughly 365 nights a year. Inside, the room holds about 850 guests at low tables facing a single stage, with a small orchestra pit and a tradition that the dancers' costumes weigh several kilograms in feathers and Swarovski crystal. The light spills out onto the boulevard around 9 p.m. and again near midnight, when the two seatings change over.
The Moulin Rouge has marked the calendar of Paris for more than 130 years. In April 2024 one of its iconic sails fell from the façade in the early hours, the first such loss in the building's history, and the windmill was rebuilt and turning again by July of the same year for the city's Olympic summer. The cabaret employs around 100 dancers drawn from classical and jazz traditions worldwide, and the cancan finale closes the show the way it has since the Belle Époque.