Café de Flore

Paris has a lot of cafes with a story and this one is again a place where so many outstanding people stopped by.

Look at the white canopy, the terrace tables, the red couches inside framed by old mirrors. Café de Flore has looked more or less like this since 1887, and it has always attracted people who had something serious on their minds.

In the 1920s, a young Chinese student named Zhou Enlai spent long hours at these tables. He was studying in Paris, quietly forming the ideas that would eventually make him the first Premier of the People's Republic of China. Around the same time, the founders of surrealism, including Apollinaire and André Breton, were turning the café into their unofficial headquarters.

During the German occupation of Paris, Jean-Paul Sartre used the upper floor as his daily office. His apartment was too cold to heat, so he came here to write, teach, and meet. Simone de Beauvoir sat beside him.

In 1953, James Baldwin completed his debut novel on that same upper floor, fuelled by coffee and cognac. He was one of a generation of Black American writers who found in Paris a freedom they could not get at home.

Picasso, Bardot, Yves Saint Laurent and Tarantino all followed. The prices today are high, but really, you are not just paying for the coffee.