Since the Age of Enlightenment, cafés became a popular meeting place of intellectuals and writers. This was especially the case over the course of the 20th century when the waterholes of la Rive Gauche developed legendary statues thanks to the literary greats who graced their tables. Although these literary cafés of the Left Bank no longer attract bohemian scribes like they did in bygone days, they are still worth making a pilgrimage to for current day writers and literary fans.
Le Procope
Considering the oldest café in Paris, this Left Bank institution has been welcoming intellectuals virtually since it opened in 1686. Thanks to the arrival of the Comédie Francaise theatre across the street in 1689, French playwrights, writers and philosophers naturally gravitated here. These include Condorcet, La Harpe, Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot, who is thought to have worked on his famous Encyclopaedia at the café. More restaurant than café today, the classic establishment still has Voltaire’s favourite table, located on the first floor.
Les Deux Magots. Photo: Cheng-en Cheng / CC
Les Deux Magots
One of the most famous cafés in Paris, if not the world, this classic institution was originally a fabrics and novelty shop which was converted into a café in 1884. It’s growing popularity with Lost Generation writers like Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce led the café to start its own literary prize in 1933. Writers continued to gravitated to it over decades including Bertolt Brecht and Vladimir Nabokov, who mentioned it in his 1955 novel Lolita.
Le Café de Flore
Opened during the café boom of the 1880s, this iconic St-Germain café, and staunch rival of its neighbour Les Deux Magots, acted as the unofficial headquarters of existentialism philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir for decades. Earlier in the century it was also a favorite of Apollinaire and Salmon, who worked on their arts review, Les Soirées de Paris, at the café. Albert Camus and poet Jacques Prévert could also found inspiration here.
La Closerie Des Lilas
Along with St-Germain, the Montparnasse district was another literary hub of the first half of the 20th century. This historic café, opened in the 1860s, first attracted avant-garde artists before drawing in both French and foreign writers. French poets Paul Verlaine, Charles Baudelaire and Max Jacob could often be found here, pen or glass in hand. In their various eras one might encounter Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, Fitzgerald and Henry Miller at its tables, however, it was Hemingway who frequented the venue the most. It’s said that he read Fitzgerald’s manuscript of The Great Gatsby here, he likely worked on The Sun Also Rises and the café is described in his memoir, A Moveable Feast.
La Rotonde
Another literary haunt of the Montparnasse district, and around the corner from our Paris School, this café used to be so popular that Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises that, “no matter what cafe in Montparnasse you ask a taxi driver to bring you to from the right bank of the river, they always take you to the Rotonde.” In literary circles you could find Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein here as well as those in the art scene like Picasso, Modigliani and Cocteau. More recently, President Emmanuel Macron chose to celebrate his 2017 Presidential victory here, adding another chapter to the legendary café’s storied history.
Photo courtesy of Café Tournon
Café Tournon
On the other side of the Luxembourg gardens, this unassuming neighbourhood café became a meeting place for the next generation of writers. In the 1950s one could find James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Chester Himes and William Gardner Smith debating around its tables over an afternoon coffee. The café also served as the early base of the staff and writers of the literary magazine The Paris Review.
Looking for inspiration for your own writing in Paris? Advance your craft by undertaking our Master’s in Creative Writing in Paris offered at our campus in the Montparnasse district.