Rosa Bonheur

About this place Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur is genuinely impossible to describe without sounding like you are overselling it, which is the problem with venues that have become institutions. It is a guinguette — a traditional French outdoor bistro-dancehall — inside the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in the 19th arrondissement, open since 2008 and grown into a Sunday afternoon ritual for queer Paris that attracts people from across the city and across the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ identities, ages, and aesthetics. The space is free to enter; you pay for drinks. Thursday and Friday evenings are sociable and relaxed; Sundays are the main event. Arrive before 5pm for a good position on the terrace, order wine, watch the park. By 8pm the music is louder and the dancing is serious. The park itself closes the venue to car noise and creates an atmosphere unlike anything available in central Paris — trees, hills, a lake, and several hundred queer people having an exceptionally good time. The Metro journey (Line 7bis to Buttes Chaumont or Botzaris) is part of the pilgrimage.