Explorer Saint-Denis

The Moulin Rouge is a cabaret in the Pigalle district, opened in 1889 and marked by the red windmill on its facade. It is linked to the origins of the modern can-can dance and stages a nightly revue; the original building burned down in 1915 and reopened after reconstruction in 1925.

An Art Deco cinema on the Grands Boulevards, opened in December 1932 by architects Auguste Bluysen and John Eberson in a style inspired by New York's Radio City Music Hall. Its facade and main hall, seating over 2,700, were listed as a historic monument in 1981. A guided tour, Rex Studios, leads visitors behind the screen and through the technical spaces.

The Palais Garnier is an opera house on Place de l'Opéra in central Paris, built between 1861 and 1875 to a design by Charles Garnier for Napoleon III. Its auditorium seats about 1,979 people beneath a painted ceiling by Marc Chagall. It was the Paris Opera's main stage until 1989 and is now used mainly for ballet.

A cabaret theatre in the Latin Quarter, on the site of a hall first built in 1803. The current building, completed in 1889, uses a metal structure designed by Gustave Eiffel, built at the same time as his tower. It reopened as a cabaret in 1977 and seats 720 for nightly dinner shows of revues and ballet.

A film archive and museum founded in 1936 by Henri Langlois and Lotte Eisner, housed since 2005 in a building by Frank Gehry at Bercy that formerly held the American Center. It holds one of the largest collections of film-related documents and objects in the world and runs the Musée Méliès, on the pioneering film-maker Georges Méliès.

The François-Mitterrand site is the main building of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, designed by architect Dominique Perrault and opened in 1996 around an esplanade with four glass towers shaped like open books. It holds a public library, a research library and exhibition spaces.