Théâtre du Gymnase Marie Bell

Closed for renovation in 1830, the theatre reopened after the July Revolution under the name Gymnase Dramatique.

In 1844, Montigny took over as director of the theatre, and to attract a wider audience abandoned somewhat the moral and edifying pieces the theatre had previously specialised in, in favour of the then-fashionable sentimental genre, with its "compromising situations, cold turpitudes, calculated affronts, sobs and agonies".

The theatre's playwrights included Balzac, Émile Augier, George Sand, Edmond About, Victorien Sardou, Octave Feuillet, Meilhac and Halévy, and Alexandre Dumas (both father and son).

In 1926, the playwright Henri Bernstein became theatre director and there put on his most famous works - Samson, La Rafaie, La Galerie des Glaces, Mélo, Le Bonheur and Le Messager.

The tragic actress Marie Bell took over as the theatre's director in 1962, and starred in a particularly famous production of Racine's Phèdre there.