That little pink cottage with the green shutters and the acacia tree — that's Le Lapin Agile. It's been a cabaret since the eighteen sixties, and it is still operating tonight.
The original name was Le Cabaret des Assassins. Why? The most common story is that a band of murderers broke in and killed the owner's son, but other versions say the walls were decorated with prints of famous killers. Either way — charming place. Then in eighteen seventy-five, the caricaturist Andre Gill painted a sign showing a rabbit leaping out of a cooking pot while balancing a wine bottle. The locals started calling it Le Lapin a Gill — Gill's Rabbit — which over time slurred into Le Lapin Agile — the Agile Rabbit. From assassins to a rabbit. The sign still hangs out front.
The golden era started in nineteen oh-three, when a man called Pere Frede took over. Large, bearded, wore a fur hat, played guitar, and kept a pet donkey named Lolo tied up outside. Under Frede, this became the unofficial clubhouse fo
r every broke genius on the hill. Picasso drank here. Apollinaire recited poetry here. Erik Satie played piano here. Modigliani, by several accounts, got drunk here, stripped naked, climbed on a table, and recited Dante's Inferno in Italian. To the room. While naked.
In nineteen oh-five, Picasso painted a self-portrait as a Harlequin sitting at this bar. He gave the painting to Pere Frede. Just h
