Think about the scene – to your laptop providers firm, you’ve simply purchased an area you’ll be able to convert to be used as an workplace and for storage within the centre of Paris. It’s wall-to-wall cabinets and has been used to inventory items for years, however if you begin stripping again the casing you discover… probably the most wonderful artwork deco mosaics from a Nineteen Twenties brothel!
That is mainly how the brand new homeowners of Aux Belles Poules discovered themselves with a magnificently preserved piece of Parisian historical past, together with racy scenes rendered in mosaic and colored tiles, that had been utterly forgotten. It’s a wild story about one thing that’s not registered as a protected historic monument.
Allow us to inform and present you extra…
The story behind the rediscovery of Aux Belles Poules is kind of fascinating. Close to Les Halles within the centre of Paris, lower than a decade in the past it was only a storage room for a garments wholesaler, stuffed with picket cabinets. The partitions have been all boxed over with wooden, no one remembered the place’s historical past, and it was up on the market.
Up so far, there’s nothing out-of-the-ordinary – simply an unremarkable room in a small unremarkable avenue…
… and so it was bought. Nevertheless, the brand new homeowners noticed one thing within the deeds that intrigued them, a sentence saying that the earlier homeowners have been to not be held accountable for any harm to the decorations of the place. However what ‘decorations’? The house regarded extraordinarily strange, flat, rectangular, with neon lighting.
And right here’s the place issues get actually fascinating.
The brand new homeowners began work on eradicating the shelving and wooden casing, and behind them have been… colored tiles. And never simply any outdated colored tiles. Courting from the Nineteen Twenties, these tiles have been truly scenes of girls carrying little or no (or much less) partaking in scenes of lust-filled debauchery with satyrs and males in opposition to a background of white clouds.
It seems that these ceramic tableaus, forgotten and hidden for many years, have been a part of an notorious Parisian brothel – Aux Belles Poules – a reputation that was additionally discovered written in mosaic within the room. It’s in all probability the one inside for a ‘enterprise’ of its form (and formally there have been 177 of them in Paris within the early twentieth century) that has remained intact.
These ‘homes of tolerance’ (as they have been quaintly referred to in French) have been very energetic between the 1870s and Nineteen Forties, till a regulation drawn up in 1945 compelled all of them to shut (though it’s mentioned that the Belles Poules limped on till 1948). After 70 years, the place closed, turned a pupil lodging home within the Fifties and later only a house to retailer bins, with the homeowners preferring to cover the wall decorations of erotic scenes.
This was in all probability for one of the best! The Nineteen Sixties and Seventies noticed many historic architectural factors of curiosity in Paris ruined or destroyed. Only some remembered that the tiles have been nonetheless there, and till very just lately nothing was achieved to rescue them (they turned protected historic monuments as just lately as 1997). They clearly have nice historic worth, and now it has been restored, the house is recurrently used to coach guests concerning the destiny of the ladies who ‘labored’ there.
Since 2017, the Belles Poules may by employed to night occasions, there are generally theatre reveals, and visits for the general public are held a few times a month (typically on Saturday afternoons). Locations are restricted, and you’ll e-book yours right here for round 14€.
A chat and present can also be organised as soon as a month with the Sœurs Papilles, with a touch of singing, dancing and slightly burlesque. 25€ per particular person, bookings right here.
Importantly, the organisers of the visits say on their web site (and their sentiment applies to our article as effectively):
“It goes with out saying that the organisation of this go to doesn’t represent an apology for prostitution or a denial of the struggling linked to it, however relatively a method supplied to all to entry the historic website and study its historical past.“
French-speakers eager to be taught extra concerning the house can take heed to the podcast beneath, with the brand new proprietor being interviewed. You may as well obtain the episode right here.
Aux Belles Poules (right here) has a go to and discuss (in French) a few times a month (13.50€, e-book right here) and a chat and present as soon as a month (25€, e-book right here)
Web site / Fb / Instagram / LinkedIn
What3Words ///constructive.canny.prop
