The Buddha-Bar is a bar, restaurant, and hotel franchise created by French-Romanian restaurateur Raymond Vișan, with its original location having opened in Paris, France in 1996.

[1] The Buddha Bar "soon became a reference among foreign yuppies and wealthy tourists visiting the city",[1] and "has spawned numerous imitators",[2] becoming popular in part because of the DJ's choice of eclectic, avant-garde music.

The theme was inspired by the discovery of the space to be used, an antique basement archive with a mezzanine, "which suggested to the architects the idea of an oriental temple and its Buddha".

[4] Buddha Bar venues have been opened in various other locations, including Marrakesh, Beirut, Belgrade, Dubai,[5] Abu Dhabi, London,[6] Manila, Mauritius, Baku, Tbilisi, Tivat, Kyiv,[7] Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Caracas, Mexico City, Monte Carlo,[8] Prague,[9] Mykonos and Santorini.

[12] In 2010, Buddhists in Jakarta protested the operating of a Buddha Bar in that city, asserting that "the use of their religious symbols in a venue serving alcohol was an affront to their religion".