Moulin Rouge!

The red-windmill cabaret that inspired the film, still dancing the cancan every night since 1889.

Access · Exterior; tickets for the shows

The neighbourhood mood that shaped the film's look: neon signs, narrow bars and a tangled mix of tourists and locals.

Access · Public space

This museum is not in the film, which was shot on soundstages in Sydney, but it tells the real story of the bohemian Montmartre the film recreates. Renoir lived and painted in its old houses, including his Bal du Moulin de la Galette, and the collection covers the hill's cabarets, with works by Toulouse-Lautrec.

Access · Ticket required

In the film's opening swoop over a painted Paris, the white basilica towers over Montmartre as the camera dives toward the Moulin Rouge. It is a cheerful anachronism, since Sacré-Cœur was only completed in 1914. Climb the steps for the view the Sydney studio artists dreamed up, then look down the hill towards Pigalle, where Zidler's real cabaret stands.

Access · Public space

Montmartre's surviving windmill and its open-air dance hall, painted by Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, is the real ancestor of the windmill-topped 'kingdom of nighttime pleasures' the film celebrates. The Radet mill still perches above a restaurant at the corner of Rue Girardon, while the older Blute-Fin hides in a private garden just uphill at Nos. 75–77.

Access · Restaurant: reservation recommended

This dance hall, opened in 1807, is where the cancan took shape and where La Goulue, Grille d'Égout and Valentin le Désossé danced before the Moulin Rouge's founders lured them away in 1889. That is the real story behind the film's Zidler and his Diamond Dogs. Rebuilt after fires in 1900 and 2011, it is a concert hall today.

Access · Ticket required for the interior

La Goulue, the real queen of the Moulin Rouge cancan immortalised on Toulouse-Lautrec's poster and the model for every 'Sparkling Diamond' since, rests in the 31st division, her ashes brought here from Pantin in 1992. Jacques Offenbach, whose Galop infernal is heard in the film's cancan, lies in the same cemetery.

Access · Public space

The pink cabaret on the back of the hill is the surviving haunt of the real Montmartre bohemians, the penniless poets, painters and musicians Christian falls in with, and Picasso, Apollinaire and Frédé's donkey Lolo were among its regulars. It still runs chanson evenings on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, much as it did around 1900.

Access · Shows Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 21:00 to 01:00, with a ticket; the façade is free to see

From 1886 to 1897 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted in a studio in this corner house at Rue Caulaincourt, turning out the Moulin Rouge posters and dance-hall canvases that made the cabaret famous. He is the real man behind John Leguizamo's absinthe-soaked painter. The building and its big studio window can still be seen from the street.

Access · Exterior only. People live here: keep your voice down and don't ring the bells.