The Beatles at the Olympia, Paris, January 1964

The Olympia is a music hall at 28 boulevard des Capucines in Paris. The Beatles played there for 18 days, from 16 January to 4 February 1964, sharing the bill with Sylvie Vartan and Trini Lopez. After the first night they heard at their hotel that I Want to Hold Your Hand had reached No. 1 in America. No Beatles marker exists.

Three weeks on a nine-act bill

The Beatles opened at the Olympia on 16 January 1964 and stayed until 4 February. They were not the only draw. The nine-act programme also had the French singer Sylvie Vartan and the American Trini Lopez, and the Beatles played an eight-song set, two and sometimes three times a day. From Me to You, She Loves You, Twist and Shout and Long Tall Sally were in it, along with I Want to Hold Your Hand.

The telegram at the George V

The band stayed at the Hotel George V. When they came back from the opening night, Brian Epstein got a telegram from Capitol Records: I Want to Hold Your Hand was No. 1 in America. That was the Cash Box chart. On Billboard the record had only just entered the Hot 100 and reached the top on 1 February, while the Beatles were still in Paris. Harry Benson photographed the band having a pillow fight in the hotel that night.

An upright piano was moved into one of the George V suites so the songwriting could go on, and Paul McCartney wrote Can't Buy Me Love there. On 29 January, in the middle of the Olympia run, the band went to EMI's Pathé Marconi studios in Paris. They recorded German-language versions of two songs and the backing track of Can't Buy Me Love. From Paris they went on to New York and The Ed Sullivan Show.

The hall you walk into is not the 1964 one

Joseph Oller opened the Olympia in April 1893, and Bruno Coquatrix turned it back into a music hall in February 1954. The hall has carried his name since his death in 1979. In the early 1990s the building faced demolition. A preservation order of 7 January 1993 saved the frontage, and the old billiard room had already been listed as a historic monument in 1991. In 1997 the auditorium itself was pulled down and rebuilt a few metres from its old position, with the entrance kept where it was. The new hall opened in November 1997 with Gilbert Bécaud.

So the entrance on the boulevard des Capucines are the ones the Beatles used in 1964, but the room behind them was rebuilt 33 years later.

No Beatles marker

No plaque or marker for the Beatles is recorded at the Olympia. The hall is still a working concert venue owned by Groupe Canal+, so the inside is open only to ticket holders, and OpenStreetMap lists it as wheelchair accessible.