President Barack Obama arrived in Paris for the UN climate conference on Sunday night, and stopped at the Bataclan concert hall to pay respect to the victims of the November 13 attacks, AFP reported.
Obama, along with French President Francois Hollande and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, laid flowers at the music venue where 90 people were killed by jihadist gunmen and suicide bombers as part of the Islamic State (ISIS) attacks on the city.
Helicopters flew overhead and police shut off the roads around the bloodiest scene of the Paris attacks, with security concerns running high as some 150 world leaders were due to descend on the French capital, according to AFP.
The visit to the Bataclan was announced at the last minute after rallies ahead of the climate talks turned violent, as anti-capitalist protesters clashed with police.
The Bataclan theater was where most of the bloodshed was seen in the Paris attack. Terrorists armed with assault rifles stormed the theater during a concert by the American band Eagles of Death Metal, executing the concert goers one by one.
The longtime owner until two months ago of the Bataclan concert hall is Joel Laloux, a Jew who now resides in Israel.
Chilling video from 2008 shows Muslims threatening the Bataclan with attacks due to a pro-Israel event being held there.
Likewise, a member of the radical group Army of Islam told French security services back in 2011 that "we had planned an attack against the Bataclan because its owners are Jewish."
Laloux, however, played down the idea that the concert hall was targeted because of its previous Jewish owners, asserting that the jihadists chose it simply because they were sure it would be full.