Guignol

Guignol is the central character of French puppet theatre — a sharp-tongued, working-class trickster invented in Lyon around 1808 by Laurent Mourguet and later adopted across France as a beloved folk-comedy icon. In Paris, small open-air Guignol theatres are a fixture of the city's major parks: the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Tuileries, and the Champs-Élysées all host regular performances, typically on weekend afternoons and during school holidays. The shows follow short, slapstick storylines in which Guignol outwits policemen, devils, and villains — a tradition that has changed little in two centuries and remains a genuine piece of living Parisian popular culture.