Located near the Opéra and the Bibliothèque Nationale, brothels such as Le Chabanais, Le Monthyon, and 6 Rue des Moulins were the exclusive domain of an elite bourgeois and aristocratic clientele. Although houses of prostitution operating under police regulation had existed in the city for most of the nineteenth century, these extravagantly decorated brothels represented a departure from the modest, utilitarian spaces municipal authorities had envisioned as part of a strategy to sanitize prostitution. In the late nineteenth century, when new and spectacular forms of public entertainment began to flourish in Paris, a type of luxury brothel, or maison de luxe, evolved. "There are mirrors everywhere, on all the walls and all the ceilings there are hangings everywhere dazzling electric lights everywhere and everywhere perfumes in this temple of Love." 1 Reflections of Desire: Masculinity and Fantasy in the Fin-de-Siècle Luxury Brothel
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