Historic monuments: the most beautiful cinemas in Paris

Jacques Haïk, a wealthy film producer and distributor, embarked on the construction of a completely extravagant movie theater (with a ceiling rising to over 30 meters, representing a starry sky). His dreams came true on December 8, 1932, with the inauguration of the Grand Rex, the largest cinema in Europe. During the Occupation, it was requisitioned by the German army, and in 1942 it was the victim of a bomb attack.
Pinocchio was the first Disney film to be shown at the Rex on May 22, 1946. And from 1954 onwards, the "water fairy" - water games - enliven the great hall every Christmas, shortly before the screening of the end-of-year Disney film.

The Grand Rex is a scale model of New York's famous Radio City Music Hall.

The cinema and its art-deco façade were listed as a historic monument in 1981.

Inaugurated on the site of a former bookshop, Le Champo opened on June 22, 1938. Roger Joly, a lighting industrialist, bought the hall. In 1941, a fire destroyed the original booth, which is was too small to be rebuilt to the new safety standards. Roger Joly and two engineers developed the famous "retro-reflex", an innovative projection system.
François Truffaut called the cinema his "headquarters". The cinema's programming gave pride of place to retrospectives and, from the 90s onwards, offered extensive cycles dedicated to major directors.
In 1989, Le Champo decided to dedicate its lobby to Jacques Tati, whose illuminated fiber-optic silhouette, straight out of "Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot", now greets the public like a totem pole.
Le Champo has been a listed historic building since 2000.

The astonishing Louxor hall will soon be one hundred years old… Created in an Art Deco style inspired by ancient Egypt, some elements are direct copies of Egyptian art (scarabs, lotus and papyrus friezes, winged discs), others are more fantastical elements of Egypt as seen by Westerners, such as the fanciful hieroglyphs decorating the ceiling beams of the main hall. The room's name is a reference to the Egyptian city. Although Egyptomania was all the rage in France in the 1920s, especially after the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb, the Louxor is a unique example of an Egyptian hall in Paris.
The Louxor was listed as a historic monument on October 5, 1981.

In 1722, banker Samuel Bernard bought the stately château de Passy for his mistress Madame de Fontaine. The estate extended over 8 hectares from the Maison de Radio France to Avenue Mozart. In 1747, it became Château de Boulainvilliers, occupied by Alexandre Jean Joseph Le Riche de La Pouplinière, fermier général under the reign of Louis XV, who had a theater built at the end of his ground's driveway. An enlightened patron of the arts, he gathered a circle of artists and intellectuals around him, including such great names as Voltaire, Quentin de La Tour, Van Loo, Stamitz, Rameau…
The château was abandoned for many years after the French Revolution. Towards the end of the 19th century, Louis Mors, a famous car manufacturer, acquired a large part of the estate, on which he had a theater built in 1894 on the site of the La Pouplinière music salon. This music enthusiast fostered the emergence of musical aesthetics of the early 19th and 20th centuries, programming artists such as Bizet, Terrasse, Wagner…

In 1931, the converted and enlarged theater became an art house cinema, one of the capital's leading film venues.
The auditorium and its decor were listed as a historic monument on October 6, 1977.