The Two Sides of Paris: Luxury and Revelry

 

Watch BBC2’s behind-the-beautifully-painted-scenes documentary Moulin Rouge: Yes We Can-Can!, for instance, and you’ll be forgiven for doing a double-take when you hear the broad Yorkshire accent of the cabaret’s glamorous associate artistic director. In fact Janet, who’s originally from Leeds, has been at the Moulin for two decades, first as a dancer herself but now running the show. And she’s giving me a quick peek backstage between the two nightly performances (moulinrouge.fr).

 

 

 

 

From the feather workshop to the sequin room (yes, there are so many they need a dedicated room), there are 450 people working to keep the show’s 60 dancers on their high heels every night. Even more unexpectedly, a nose around the dressing room reveals that Janet is far from the only Brit on the payroll: more of the troupe come from the UK than from France (and the biggest contingent of all is the Aussies).

 

Out in the auditorium – a gorgeous belle époque confection of rich red drapes and Toulouse-Lautrec touches – I’m amazed (again!) to clock spectators aged from nine to 90. But once the spangled curtain goes up, I see that the show does indeed feel more like a family panto than a salty strip club.

 

The dance routines are no more outrageous than you’d see in London’s West End – they’re interspersed with performances by circus-style strongmen and gymnasts – and the whole thing takes cruise-ship camp to the next, spectacular level (those barely dressed clowns give way to barely dressed Persian princesses seducing barely dressed pith-helmeted Victorian explorers, all with painted-on smiles as cheesy as the local brie).

 

 

 

 

For something a little more érotique, the next day I head a mile down the road to the offices of a family computer firm. Back in 2015, Caroline and her dad bought the property for their business, stripped out its wood panelling, and found some decidedly racy 1920s tiles on the walls. A spot of research revealed that the place had once been a noted brothel called Aux Belles Poules, where 20 rooms housed 23 working girls (an intriguing bit of maths), so Caroline restored the downstairs rooms to their full glory – not just tiles, but mirrors, mosaics and mythological designs dancing off every wall. She now gives tours of the place, hires it out for conferences and weddings, and runs a burlesque night there once a month (auxbellespoules.fr).

 

Sticking to the Montmartre/Pigalle area of Paris – once the city’s red-light district, now an ever-trendy quarter of bohemian bars, cool cafés, arty coffee joints and chic boutiques – I keep things saucy with a splendidly decadent meal of bacon scones and confit lamb at Frenchie Restaurant (you don’t need a baccalaureate to guess what the chef, Greg Marchand, is on about when he’s quoted on the website as saying “Frenchie Pigalle c’est un électron libre... un peu plus sexy-trash” (frenchie-pigalle.com).

 

I stay the night nearby at La Fantaisie (lafantaisie.com), a gorgeous new hotel as voluptuous as anything else I’ve experienced so far, thanks to its boudoir-in-the-sky rooftop bar and hide-from-prying-eyes ground-floor secret garden – but at the same time utterly, artily stylish.

 

The morning after, mind, my thoughts are on higher things, and I head to Paris’s grand 1st arrondissement and its Louvre and Musée d’Orsay museums (though yes, the Mona Lisa’s smirk, on display at the former, suggests she might have been up to no good last night, too). Situated perfectly between those two artistic titans, beside the stately Tuileries Garden and yards from the Seine and Champs-Élysées, hotel Le Meurice is one of the city’s most elegant addresses, and I check in to try and keep myself out of temptation’s way (dorchestercollection.com/paris/le-meurice).

 

 

 

 

That works up to a point (the Alain Ducasse restaurant, in a room as richly decorated as Versailles, is decorously decadent) – but the siren call of sexy Montmartre reaches even here. Le Meurice has long been the chosen hotel of artists (Dalí, Warhol, Picasso...) and offers a tour of the latter’s haunts in Montmartre, so I soon find myself back among the district’s slightly raffish bars and cafés.

 

 

The Basilica of Sacré-Cœur looms over them all, and on a whim I wander inside – to find nuns singing vespers, high and reedy, like schoolchildren; and a huge, handsome Christ in mosaic above the altar, his arms stretched wide enough to absolve all the sins of my decidedly debauched weekend in Paris.

 

I get back on the Eurostar (eurostar.com) – which is both the most indulgent way to visit the city, since you can skip the seventh circle of hell that is the airport; and the worthiest, because it’s so much greener than flying – and feel almost virtuous. It’s been naughty...but nice.

 

ED GRENBY

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