THE VIRTUAL WINE MUSEUM - LE MUSÉE VIRTUEL DU VIN

L’Enfer [Hell] is a famous restaurant-cabaret at the foot of Montmartre’s hill. While the hill belongs to the 18th arrondissement, the cabaret itself was located on the odd side of Boulvard de Clichy, and therefore administratively attached to the 9th arrondissement. It was paired with the Cabaret du Ciel. To enter, you had to go through a door resembling the giant mouth of Leviathan, devourer of damned souls. The façade was “an ode in stucco to the nudity of a woman trapped in the flames of Hell.” The cabaret advertised “magic things”, a show which “never really differed from those of the shacks of the Neuilly Show. It was the same exhibition of illusionist tricks, produced through combinations of mirrors and plays of light. But the organ added its mysterious music to these rapid scenes.” (Jules Claretie, La Vie à Paris, 1897). The cabaret was destroyed in 1950 and succeeded by a food business.