Boulevard de Clichy and boulevard de Rochechouart meet at Place Pigalle. The streets behind them climb toward Montmartre and are much quieter.
What Pigalle looks like
Two boulevards meet at . runs west from it and boulevard de Rochechouart runs east. Both are wide, with a paved walk of plane trees down the middle.
They are wide because of what used to stand there. The Farmers General wall ran along this line. There was a road inside it and another outside, and in 1864 the two were merged into one boulevard.
Dance halls and theatres opened along both of them at the end of the nineteenth century, and some are still working. The has been at 82 boulevard de Clichy, on Place Blanche, since 1889. was built in 1894 at 80 boulevard de Rochechouart, burned in 1900 and was rebuilt by Joseph Cassien-Bernard in 1902. It was a cinema before the war and a theatre again from 1992.
The sex shops came much later. They have been concentrated on boulevard de Clichy since 1969. Numbers 58 and 60 are the , put up in 1896, with a courtyard and artists' studios behind the front.
The square itself was rebuilt between May 2023 and March 2024. The fountain was restored and beds of shrubs were planted around it. The roadway was relaid in setts and the pavements in wide granite slabs.
Behind the boulevards the streets climb toward Montmartre and go quiet within a block. Some of the lanes off them are private. is shut by an iron gate at the rue Victor-Massé end, and the gate onto has been walled up. is open, a cobbled alley with an old Bains sign on the wall.
Films shot in Pigalle
François Truffaut shot part of Les Quatre Cents Coups around the square in 1958, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet used the boulevard for Amélie in 2001. The square in the Truffaut shots was rebuilt in 2023 and 2024, so the fountain, the planting and the paving are all newer than the film.
Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959
René's house is on avenue Frochot, the private lane that runs from 26 rue Victor-Massé to the back of . Truffaut filmed the exteriors at the address where Jean Renoir had lived. The avenue is closed by an iron gate at the rue Victor-Massé end and the gate onto the square has been walled up, so anything shot here needs the residents. Claude Zidi opened Les Ripoux at that junction in 1984.
Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959
Antoine is driven out of Paris in a police van after his arrest, and the last thing he sees through the back of it is . The Folies Pigalle is in the frame, at number 11. That building went up in 1846 as eleven artists' studios. It was a cinema from 1908 and a hall for nude dancing from 1956. It became a nightclub in 1991.
Amélie, 2001
Nino works in a sex shop on boulevard de Clichy, called Palace Vidéo in the film. The address is number 37, between and Place Blanche. The shop later traded as Toys Palace. Jeunet shot the film's interiors in a studio in Cologne, so only the front of the shop is here.
What Pigalle can double for
Pigalle can stand in for a European red light district, a provincial French city at night and a nineteenth century theatre street.
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