La Nouvelle Athènes

The Nouvelle Athènes was a café in the Place Pigalle in Paris, France. It was a meeting place for impressionist painters, including Matisse, Van Gogh and Degas. Degas painted L'Absinthe in this place. Another notable denizen was the eccentric composer Erik Satie, who played the piano in the cafe, and was there introduced to a fifteen-year-old Maurice Ravel by Ravel's father.

Two figures at the Nouvelle Athènes. L'Absinthe, Degas, 1876.

During the 1940s, the café was known as the Sphynx; it was a striptease club frequented by the Nazis and later by the Free French partisans. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was known as the New Moon, a rock venue where Mano Negra, the French Lovers, Noir Désir, Calvin Russel, the Naked Apes of Reason, Les Wampas, and many other groups performed.

The café building was destroyed by fire in 2004.

See also
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