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The brilliant purple windmill of the Moulin Rouge has been an omnipresent marker atop the famed cabaret venue for greater than a century.
But on Thursday, Parisians woke as much as an alarming sight: the blades of the windmill bent and mendacity on the bottom after it broke off and fell in a single day.
Footage circulating in native information media on Thursday confirmed the blades tangled on the bottom in entrance of the constructing. Three letters of the intense “Moulin Rouge” signal additionally appeared to have fallen.
Firefighters have been referred to as to the realm after 2 a.m., a spokeswoman for the Paris Fire Brigade mentioned, and examined the construction to verify nothing else was threatening to fall. With the zone safe and no person injured, the firefighters rapidly left. Workers have been cleaning up the debris Thursday morning.
A spokeswoman for the Moulin Rouge mentioned through textual content messages that collapse had been brought on by a “mechanical drawback,” and confirmed that no person had been injured. It was the primary time within the venue’s historical past that such an accident had taken place, she mentioned.
The Moulin Rouge is about to have a good time its one hundred and thirty fifth anniversary this 12 months. It constructed a repute for internet hosting whirlwind nights and lavish exhibits, and its dancers performed a paramount position in bringing the frenzied fashion of the fashionable cancan dance to the mainstream. In current years, it has sought to draw a youthful crowd, and opened a rooftop bar close to the windmill blades.
It has seen harm earlier than: A fireplace ravaged the venue in 1915, and it didn’t reopen till almost a decade later.
The blades could be “repaired in a short time,” the Moulin Rouge spokeswoman mentioned. It was not identified on Thursday precisely what mechanical drawback had precipitated the blades to interrupt off.
An exterior firm checks the windmill each two months, she mentioned, and had final examined the blades in February.
But enterprise on the cabaret, which runs two exhibits a day, would go on as normal.
“The Moulin Rouge stays open,” she mentioned.
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting from Paris.
