5 things to know about Paris' iconic Moulin Rouge

The giant sails of the Moulin Rouge's windmill fell off on Wednesday, due to what its management called a technical problem.

The windmill is a striking addition to the Paris skyline and helps make the cabaret one of the most recognisable in the world, as well as giving it its name (moulin is the French word for mill).

Here are five facts about the tourist hotspot:

The Cancan is English

The stock image of the Moulin Rouge is of glitzy girls in frilly dresses kicking their legs high.

Tourists today shell out more than €100 to see their performances, twice a day, all year round.

Few know that the dance known as the French Cancan was invented by an Englishman, Charles Morton, the founder of the British music hall.

On a trip to France, he discovered a wilder, noisier and altogether more risqué variation of the Cancan dance that was all the rage in Europe at the time.

Morton brought the dance, which he called the French Cancan, back to London - from where it crossed back to France under its new name.

Absinthe and art

Before it became the polished venue it is today, the Moulin Rouge was a den of iniquity.

From when it first opened in 1889, many artists passed through - and often passed out.

Dancers doubled up as prostitutes, mingling with patrons in a whirl fuelled by the potent spirit absinthe, known for generating a haze in the minds of drinkers and rendering them catatonic.

Such wild scenes were immortalised in the paintings of one of the most famous artists to have frequented the windmill: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

His La Goulue, among others, depict the interior of the club and its colourful characters in a riotous blur.

Singers

It wasn't all dance. There was also plenty of song at the Moulin Rouge.

Iconic French singer and actor Yves Montand strutted the Moulin's stage, which also welcomed some of America's biggest crooners, including Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.

A-listers who have taken in the spectacle include Elvis Presley, who according to the Moulin's website never came to Paris without dropping by, as well as Salvador Dali, the Beatles and Buster Keaton.

Hollywood treatment

The Moulin Rouge's fame got a further boost after getting the Hollywood treatment.

In 2001, Australian director Baz Luhrmann adapted it to the screen with Nicole Kidman leading the cast as a dancer in the Oscar-winning film.

The film in turn was turned into a highly popular musical that has been running for years in the West End and Broadway.

Survivor

The Moulin Rouge has survived several calamities down the years.

In 1915 a fire reduced most of it to a smouldering ruin, with just the facade and a portion of the stage still standing.

In the 1990s it was on the brink of financial collapse when the courts stepped in and appointed an administrator, who turned it around.

Today it pulls in around 600,000 visitors every year, nearly double its intake in the late 1990s.