The Boulevard des Capucines () is a boulevard in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. It is one of the '

Grands Boulevards The ''grands boulevards'' The ''Grands Boulevards'' are the quintessence of the Parisian boulevards. Their origin is a plan initiated by Louis XIV's minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert in the late 1660s, of comprehensive reforms and remodeling ...

' in

, a chain of boulevards built through the former course of the Wall of Charles V and the Louis XIII Wall, which were destroyed on the orders of

Louis XIV LouisXIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reign ...

. The name comes from a beautiful convent of Capuchin nuns whose garden was on the south side of the boulevard prior to the French Revolution. The former name, ''Rue Basse-du-Rempart'' ("bottom-of-the-wall street" in French), suggests that, in the beginning, the street paralleled the city wall of Paris. Then, when the wall was destroyed, the street was widened and became a boulevard.

Notable places

At No. 1 stood the Neapolitan Café, famous for the writers, journalists, and actors who were its patrons, such as

Catulle Mendès Catulle Mendès (; 22 May 1841 – 8 February 1909) was a French poet and man of letters. Early life and career Of Portuguese Jewish extraction, Mendès was born in Bordeaux. After childhood and adolescence in Toulouse, he arrived in Paris in 1 ...

, Jean Moréas, Armand Silvestre, and Laurent Tailhade. No. 2, at the junction with the

rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin The Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin () is a street in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. It runs north-northwest from the Boulevard des Italiens to the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris, Église de la Sainte-Trinité. History In the 17th century, ...

, was the site of the former Hotel de Montmorency, then ''

Théâtre du Vaudeville The Théâtre du Vaudeville () was a theatre company in Paris. It opened on 12 January 1792 on rue de Chartres. Its directors, Pierre-Antoine-Augustin de Piis, Piis and Yves Barré, Barré, mainly put on "petites pièces mêlées de couplets s ...

'' 1869, later Paramount Opéra movies in 1927 and Gaumont Opéra since 2007. The main hall was the 'grand salon' of the hotel in the 18th century. The rotunda on the facade has been kept. No. 5 was the location of the photographic studio of Pierre-Louis Pierson (later associated with the Mayer brothers), who was the photographic collaborator of Virginia Oldoini, Countess di Castiglione. At No. 7, the ''Georama'' was erected in 1825: it was possible to see "the whole earth" inside a sphere 14 meters in diameter. At No. 8,

Jacques Offenbach Jacques Offenbach (; 20 June 18195 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera ''The Tales of Hoffmann''. He was a p ...

lived from 1876 and died in 1880. At No. 12, the ''Grand Hotel'' was built on a former swamp-garden. No. 14 was the site of the ''Hotel Scribe'' and the location of the former ''Grand Café'' where the first public showing of movies by

Auguste and Louis Lumière The Lumière brothers (, ; ), Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière (19 October 1862 – 10 April 1954) and Louis Jean Lumière (5 October 1864 – 6 June 1948), were French manufacturers of photography equipment, best known for their ' motion ...

took place in the Salon Indien on 28 December 1895. Here, too, X-ray light experiments were carried out by Dr.

Wilhelm Röntgen Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (; 27 March 1845 – 10 February 1923), sometimes Transliteration, transliterated as Roentgen ( ), was a German physicist who produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays. As ...

. From No. 16 to No. 22 stood the buildings of the former newspaper ''L'Évènement'', founded by

Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo, vicomte Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romanticism, Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, journalist, human rights activist and politician. His most famous works are the novels ''The Hunchbac ...

At No. 24,

Mistinguett Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois (5 April 1873 – 5 January 1956), known professionally as Mistinguett (), was a French actress and singer. She was at one time the highest-paid female entertainer in the world. Early life The daughter of Antoine Bo ...

lived from 1905 to 1956. No. 25 was the former location of the Musée Cognacq-Jay set up in 1931. At No. 27 stood the former store, the ''Samaritaine de Luxe'', built by

Frantz Jourdain Frantz Jourdain (; 3 October 1847 – 22 August 1935) was a Belgian architect and author. He is best known for La Samaritaine, an Art Nouveau department store built in the 1st arrondissement of Paris in three stages between 1904 and 1928. He was r ...

, a specialist in

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...

. No. 28 was the location of a

roller coaster A roller coaster is a type of list of amusement rides, amusement ride employing a form of elevated Railway track, railroad track that carries passengers on a roller coaster train, train through tight turns, steep slopes, and other elements, usua ...

called ''montagnes russes'' (Russian mountains) in 1889. It was replaced in 1893 by the Olympia theater, a famous music hall founded in 1888 by Joseph Oller and taken over in 1952 by

Bruno Coquatrix Bruno Coquatrix (; 5 August 1910, Ronchin, Nord – 1 April 1979) was a French record producer, the owner and manager of Olympia in Paris from 1954 until his death in 1979. Career Coquatrix was first known as a song and music writer. He wrot ...

. No. 35 was where

Nadar Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (; 5 April 1820 – 20 March 1910), known by the pseudonym Nadar () or Félix Nadar'','' was a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, balloon (aircraft), balloonist, and proponent of History of avi ...

had his photography studio, and was previously the studio of Gustave Le Gray, the central figure in French photography of the 1850s — an artist, teacher, and the author of several widely distributed instructional manuals on photography. And it here that at Nadar's invitation, the

First Impressionist Exhibition The First Impressionist Exhibition was an art exhibition held by the , a group of nineteenth-century artists who had been rejected by the official Paris Salon (Paris), Salon and pursued their own venue to exhibit their artworks. The exhibition wa ...

was held on 15 April 1874, exhibitors included Renoir,

Édouard Manet Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French Modernism, modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism (art movement), R ...

Pissarro Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( ; ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...

, and

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, ; ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of Impressionism painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his ...

. The painting by

, ''

Impression, Sunrise ''Impression, Sunrise'' () is an 1872 painting by Claude Monet first shown at what would become known as the " Exhibition of the Impressionists" in Paris in April, 1874. The painting is credited with inspiring the name of the Impressionist movem ...

'', gave the exhibitors the name of

Impressionists Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subjec ...

. Another of Claude Monet's paintings painted from a window in Nadar's studio is entitled '' Boulevard des Capucines'', and is now visible in the

Pushkin Museum The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (, abbreviated as , ''GMII'') is the largest museum of European art in Moscow. It is located in Volkhonka street, just opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The International musical festival Sviatos ...

in Moscow or the

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art gallery, art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of A ...

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City, Missouri, abbreviated KC or KCMO, is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by List of cities in Missouri, population and area. The city lies within Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson, Clay County, Missouri, Clay, and Pl ...

. From No. 37 to No. 43 was the former location of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1820 to 1853. On 23 February 1848, a battalion of the 14th regiment blocked the boulevard to protect

François Guizot François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (; 4 October 1787 – 12 September 1874) was a French historian, orator and Politician, statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics between the July Revolution, Revolution of 1830 and the Revoluti ...

. In the evening, a crowd of demonstrators tried to break down the barricade. The soldiers fired, killing 35 people and wounding 50. The demonstrators put the corpses in a dumper and called the people of Paris to arms. It was the beginning of the revolution which ended the reign of

Louis-Philippe Louis Philippe I (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850), nicknamed the Citizen King, was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, the penultimate monarch of France, and the last French monarch to bear the title "King". He abdicated from his throne ...

the next day.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Boulevard Des Capucines 2nd arrondissement of Paris 9th arrondissement of Paris Capucines