The Folies Bergère is a Parisian music hall which was at the height of its fame and popularity from the 1890s through the 1920s. As of today the institution is still in business.

Les Folies Bergère - Paris

Located in the 9th Arondissement, it was built as an opera house by the architect Plumeret. It was patterned after the Alhambra music hall in London. It opened on 2 May 1869 as the Folies Trévise, with fare including operettas, comic opera, popular song, and gymnastics.

The name was the French word "folies", derived from the Latin word for "leaves" (foliae), connoting the idea of an outdoors entertainment venue, combined with the name of one of the adjacent streets, the "rue Trevise". (It was on the intersection of the rue Richer and the rue Trévise.) Unfortunately, the Duc de Trévise, a prominent nobleman, did not want people to think that he was associated with a bawdy dance hall. As a result, it was renamed the Folies Bergère on 13 September 1872, after another nearby street, the rue Bergère (the feminine form of "sheperd").

Édouard Manet's 1882 well-known painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère depicts a bar-girl, one of the demimondaine, standing before a mirror.

The Folies Bergère catered to popular taste. Shows featured elaborate costumes; the women's were frequently revealing, and shows often contained a good deal of nudity. Shows also played up the "exoticness" of persons and things from other cultures, obliging the Parisian fascination with "négritude" of the 1920s.