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The oldest art house cinema in Paris will reopen its doors in 2025

undefined undefined 18 février 2025 undefined 09h30

The Editor

© Loci Anima

Closed for renovations since 2015, the La Pagode cinema is set to welcome back movie lovers sometime this year. Before or after their screening, film enthusiasts can stretch their legs in the beautifully restored Japanese garden on the premises.  

It's one of the most quirky cinema spots in Paris, yet the younger film enthusiasts have probably never set foot there. La Pagode, an art and essay establishment on Rue de Babylone, experienced its golden age in the 20th century, before falling into disrepair in the mid-2010s. At that time, a renovation project was put into place, but delays and hiccups piled up: it ultimately took a decade to refresh the only cinema in the 7th arrondissement. Let's take this opportunity to trace its history, just as it approaches its reopening. 

.© Loci Anima


A Cinema Built Under the Influence of Japonism 

La Pagode was created out of the love that François-Émile Morin, the director of Bon Marché, had for his wife Suzanne Kelsen. To give her a gift worthy of her, instead of a private hotel purchased in 1891, he had a real pagoda built right in the heart of Paris! For the decoration, this businessman gave the architect Alexandre Marcel full creative freedom: inspired by the Nikkō Tōshō-gū sanctuary, a 17th-century masterpiece located in the Japanese city of Nikko, he imported murals and hangings from Japan. He would later become a leading expert in this type of Asian-style building; François-Émile Morin, however, was less ch...He will be left by his wife a few months later, as she has met another man during a reception... in that very same cinema. 

© Loci Anima


From Construction Sites to Spectacles  

You’ll get it: from this failed marriage, at least a new prestigious institution was born, where events surrounding the seventh art are numerous and lively. In the 1960s, La Pagode becomes THE trendy Parisian cinema, the place to be for discovering the masterpieces of the New Wave, crafted by the masters like Bergman, Cocteau, Bunuel, and Truffaut. A renowned spot for the originality of its two cinema halls and its Japanese-inspired spirit, which can even be felt in its garden.

However, the building is delicate, and will undergo several rounds of modernization. In 1973, the garden (which would be classified as a historic monument ten years later) was redesigned, the aesthetic... ```dil;ade (also classified in 1990) is cleaned up, and a tea salon is created. In 1997, the roof of a room threatens to collapse: the work lasts three years. Finally, in November 2015, fifteen years later, a new renovation project is launched, and La Pagode locks its doors… A door still sealed today. 


Rebirth from Controversies 

Launched on the market in 2015, the institution was only purchased in 2017 by the American real estate mogul and film enthusiast Charles S. Cohen. His goal is: « To bring cinema back to life in three years ». Ultimately, it took him ten years, a delay caused by several controversies, with the most notable emerging during COVID-19. On May 11, 2020, the century-old trees were chopped down: the ginkgo, the horse chestnut, the weeping beech, along with all the tall trees that towered over the quirky pavilion, to make way for the construction of two underground halls… This sparked a major controversy among residents of the Sèvres-Babylone neighborhood, as well as some environmental activists. 

The construction site has been criticized for its repeated violations of the li...I, violating the legal protective measures, am being pursued at all costs. The Pagoda, in addition to a new Japanese garden and a glass-walled reception pavilion, will also be expanded with four cinema rooms, one of which will be fully restored. This project will cost nearly eight million euros to Charles S. Cohen.

La Pagode Cinema
57 bis, rue de Babylone - 7th
Reopening Soon