The well-known gay café Montmartre in Halvemaansteeg will close its doors on December 4. This means that one of the last places dissappears from the once popular gay nightlife area along the Amstel.

The impending closure of Montmartre was announced yesterday via a post on Facebook. It was also announced that the last weekend, from December 1 to 3, will be a final festive celebration of the past 40 years.

Le Montmartre de Paris, as the place is still officially called, opened in April 1983 as the successor to straight café Chez Tony. A special feature are the wall paintings that were painted around 1968 by the then well-known graphic designer Eppo Doeve and which can also be seen in the virtual tour below:




At the time, Montmartre was the second gay café in Halvemaansteeg, after Manfred Langer opened his famous café Chez Manfred there in 1978. In 1994, the Entre Nous became a gay bar as well, which made Halvemaansteeg such a popular gay nightlife street that during Gay Pride the street parties were initially held here first and only later along the Amstel.

Montmartre has always been closely involved in these Pride celebrations. For example, from 2006 to 2008, owner Hugo Braakhuis was chairman of Pride organizer ProGay and current owner Oscar Rookhuijzen first organized the Pride celebrations along the Amstel and then those on Rembrandtplein.




Originally, the largest concentration of gay bars was located along the Amstel and in the adjacent streets, but from 2010 onwards they disappeared one by one: first the Wapen van London, then Entre Nous, the Hotspot, the Queers Café and finally bar FAME. Although the Amstel Taveerne still exists under the name Amstel Fifty Four, it attracts little gay audience anymore.

However, it was recently announced that Amstel 178 stays a gay place: a "naked late-night bar for men" called Free Willie will open there at the beginning of December. In addition, Club Raum also hopes to quickly obtain a permit for an underground queer club near Sloterdijk train station.

As much as the closure of a place like Montmartre is a loss, the total number of LGBT venues in Amsterdam remains more than at the same level.

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