Paris has some great historic cafes, in this article we will take you in a tour of the most relevant ones. Enjoy!
This is only the beginning our historical coffee tours, we are going to take you all over the world. We think that Paris would be a great start.
Paris: main 3 historical Café
Le Café Procope
This has been the first literary hotspot in Paris.
If you are wondering about its somehow Italian-sounding name, well you are right, an Italian immigrant, from Sicily, Mr Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli took the place over. The café was family run, and it became especially popular when Louis XIV nominated its owner, Francesco, as the best granita, ice-creams and sorbets maker.
Of course, such an honour meant a great deal of celebrities of the times, among the high-ranking costumer there was Napoléon, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Verlaine, Voltaire, and more. So, if you ever stop by for a “café” at the Café Procope, you might be sitting where one of those illustrious names had the idea for one of his great masterpieces.
The Café is today a restaurant, but everyone in the city know the story behind the place, and each Parisian is very proud about it.
Le Cafè de la Paix
Right on the side of the Place de l’Opéra, was originally the Grand Hotel de la Paix. The place was the rendezvous point for the bohemians of the time: artists, writers, philosophers and astrologists were all to be met there.
If you were able to travel back in time and enter the Café de la Paix, you would probably meet people like Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, Émile Zola, Marcel Proust and Guy de Maupassant.
This great place has been hit by a German grenade in ‘44 but was remodelled in 2003, and today is considered one of the most iconic places of the entire city.
La Rotonde
Among the most relevant cafés in the city, we cannot leave out La Rotonde. Its relevance is mainly due to the fact that this institution was able to move the main painters of the 20th century from their historical location in Montmartre, to the more modern neighbourhood of Montparnasse. This was a great change that shaped somehow the artistic environment in the city.
The shape of La Rotonde, is of course roundish, as it’s on a corner, and has the very traditional Parisian small terrace all around it. As the other historical places that we mentioned before, the patrons of La Rotonde were notable. Right there, the French poet Jean Cocteau took, in 1916, portrait-pictures of his friends unwinding it the Café’s terrace. Do you want to know who his friends were? Here’s a brief list: Max Jacob, Manuel Ortiz de Zarate, Marie Vassilieff, Pablo Picasso, Henri-Pierre Roché, Paquarette and Amedeo Modigliani.
