Behind the number 12, rue Chabanais, a typical building on a typical back street not far from the Musée du Louvre in Paris, used to be one of the most notorious and prestigious bordellos of the golden era. Today, it’s an apartment building, but just across the road at number 11, an inconspicuous little boutique gallery is keeping the sordid secrets of its lustful past alive.
World’s apart from Paris’ vast official art galleries and museums, Au Bonheur du Jour is run by a fifty-something former cabaret dancer, Nicole Canet, who refers to herself as an ‘archeologist of erotica’ … [that's not her in the photograph above].
The entrance hall was designed as a bare stone cave; the bedrooms were lavishly decorated, many in their own style: Moorish, Hindu, Japanese, Pompeii or in the style of Louis XVI.
Her unusual intimate gallery sits facing the old site of Le Chabanais, one of the most luxurious ‘maisons closes’ that Paris had ever seen during its heyday of authorized brothels. The Prince of Wales (future King of England, Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria) had his very own room at the establishment that carried his coat of arms above the bed
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