Le Grand Rex is a Parisian cinema and concert venue. Location and access It is located at , boulevard Poissonnière in the 2nd arrondissement, on the grands boulevards. Its facades and roofs, as well as its hall and its decor have been listed as a Monument historique since a decree on October 5, 1981. This giant cinema has a capacity of more than 2700 people in its great hall and posts an average attendance levels of 1 million visitors per year. Le Grand Rex is served by the Metro lines 8 and 9 at the Bonne-Nouvelle station, as well as by the bus lines 20, 32 and 39. History In the early 1930s, Jacques Haïk, a wealthy movie producer and distributor and the owner of the Olympia, gets the idea of building a very extravagant cinema: it could have a capacity of more than 5000 spectators on a surface area of m², with a ceiling peaking at more than 30 meters, representing a luminous starry vault. Its designers are the architect Auguste Bluysen and the engineer John Eberson. The façade is designed by the sculptor Henri-Édouard Navarre and the decoration of the great hall by Maurice Dufrène. The Grand Rex is a scale model of the famous Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The cinema is also known for its interior decor. Specialized in "atmospheric halls", its architects built more than 400 decors of phantasmatic cities under cloudy, clear or starry skies in the United States. Here, the great hall has been decorated by an "ancient Mediterranean" city in relief, located in the open air with its colorful walls reproducing the Art deco atmosphere of the "French Riviera" villas. All of the architect's desires were fulfilled, except for the number of seats, which originally had to be reduced to . The Grand Rex hall opens its doors on the evening of December 8, 1932, in the presence of the cinema's pioneer, Louis Lumière and guests. The Three Musketeers by Henri Diamant-Berger is on the bill. It is one the biggest halls in Paris. The projection booth is located in the corbel of the rue Poissonnière. The angle lantern is actually a simple metal trellis on which was projected cement mortar. The producer and director Émile Couzinet opens a small Rex in Bordeaux (800 seats), designed by the same architects, which stays open until the 1970s. Despite the success