La Nouvelle Athènes

The Nouvelle Athènes, or Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes, was a café located at 66 Rue Pigalle in the Place Pigalle in Paris, France.^[1] It was the setting for many Impressionist paintings, as a result of being the meeting place for painters,^[1]^[2] including Matisse, Van Gogh and Degas.

In 1874, a few artists met at the cafe to plan the first Impressionism painting exhibition.^[2] Degas painted L'Absinthe in this place. Another notable denizen was the eccentric composer Erik Satie, who played the piano in the cafe, and was there introduced to a fifteen-year-old Maurice Ravel by Ravel's father.

During the 1940s, the café was known as the Sphynx; it was a striptease club frequented by the Nazis and later by the Free French partisans. From the 1960s to the 1990s, it was known as the New Moon,^[3] first a lesbian cabaret, then a rock venue where Mano Negra, the French Lovers, Noir Désir, Calvin Russel, the Naked Apes of Reason, Les Wampas, and many other groups performed.