La Cigale is booked for conventions, seminars, award ceremonies, staff New Year events, general meetings, product launches, fashion shows, filming, galas and private concerts. The hall takes 850 people in a seated format and up to 600 for a cocktail or an evening party in its reception areas. It stands at 120 boulevard Marguerite de Rochechouart, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, at the foot of the Butte Montmartre.
Seminars and company events
The venue's private hire team handles events outside the public concert season. A seated format of 850 suits a convention, a company plenary, a general meeting or an award ceremony, with the audience facing the 100-square-meter stage. The same stage can take a keynote, a panel, a band or a show, since the hall is built and equipped for live performance, with professional sound and lighting used every night for concerts.
The cocktail and party format, up to 600 guests, uses the reception areas for a product launch, a staff New Year event or a company evening. Brands have also used the hall for fashion shows; one designer staged a walk inside a long glass cube that ran from the stage into the hall, with the audience all around. The hall also works as a set for filming.
The team offers private visits of the hall, and a 3D virtual tour is available on the website for a first look.
Rooms and capacities
- Main hall, seated format: 850 people, facing a 100-square-meter stage.
- Reception areas, cocktail or party format: up to 600 people.
Separate figures for individual bars or foyers are not published; the team adapts the layout to each brief.
History and setting
La Cigale opened in 1887 in Pigalle as a café-concert, with an audience of about a thousand on its first night. Like its neighbor the Moulin Rouge, it presented cancan dancers, sketches and music. Operettas and vaudeville followed until 1927, with performers such as Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier and Arletty. The hall then spent about sixty years as a cinema.
In 1987, Jacques Renault and Fabrice Coat, co-founders of the Paris nightclub Les Bains Douches, took over the hall and asked designer Philippe Starck to transform it. It became the concert hall known today. Les Rita Mitsouko, Iggy Pop, Texas, Radiohead, Johnny Hallyday, Prince, Justice and many more have played there. From the 2000s it began to host fashion shows, for Jean Paul Gaultier, Comme des Garçons and Isabel Marant among others, and Woody Allen filmed scenes for Midnight in Paris inside. The hall states more than 1.2 million spectators, 2,868 artists and 4,667 performances. Its public program today runs from rock, pop, rap and jazz to comedy and dance. It has never closed since 1887.
Getting there
The address is 120 boulevard Marguerite de Rochechouart, 75018 Paris. The nearest metro stations are Pigalle (line 12) and Anvers (line 2), both a short walk away. Pigalle and the Montmartre hill are on the doorstep, with Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est a few metro stops away for groups arriving by train.
