Montmartre’s Famous Cafes

Long ago the Montmartre used to be famous not for Bohemian cafes and cabarets, cancan and polka, and even not for tourist restaurants with disgusting food. It used to be known for…nunneries. The name to the area was given by the students who also lived there. A nice neighbourhood. For the both sides…

In XVII century “Closerie des Lilas” was a coaching inn on the way from Paris to Fontebleau and Orlean. Until the beginning of the 20th the café was a favourite meeting place of the poets-symbolists. From 1905 to 1914 the place hosted an “editorial office” of the “Poetry And Prose”. This almost self-publishing magazine was the first to publish Andre Gide and Jules Romains. Bodler, Verlaine and Maeterlinck appointed the meetings at “Closerie des Lilas”. The next literature generation to choose the place was a generation of Dadaists and Surrealists. The place entered the annals not only European but also Irish literature: James Joyce and Samuel Becket often came here to drink a cup of coffee as well as to get inspiration. The café also contributed to the American literature: Hemingway worked here over “The Sun Also Rises”, Dos Passos wrote his great trilogy “The USA”. Thomas Wolfe also used to pop in (he even mentioned the café in his novel “Of Time And The River”).

Young poets and artists called “Le Coupole” an “academy of the Bohemian life”. The café appeared in 1927 replacing the coal storehouse and quickly became very popular attracting the audience by a) cheap food b) dance floor in the ceiling. Here Louis Aragon got acquainted with Elsa Triole and Henri Miller tried to give his wedding ring as a payment for the dinner. In “Le Coupole” Ilya Erenburg wrote for “Izvestiya”, here worked Francoise Sagan and Gabriel Garcia Marquez…

Neighbouring and the most famous Paris café – “Le Rotonde” is a real mecca for those who want to see the place where was born and developed painting of the European avant-garde. Nowadays it is a luxury restaurant, and there’s no bitter, hungry and smoky atmosphere of bohemia there…it was over 90 years ago when this café opened its doors to public. Nobody thought that it is destined to become one of the most famous places in Paris as well as in the whole Europe.

At that time anise vodka cost 5 sous, a breakfast – 10 sous. Low prices attracted the Bohemia. Besides they got tired of the Montmartre and started wondering across Paris in search for a better place. Picasso was the first to choose the place, and he was followed by Chagall, Vlamink, Kandinsky, Leger and Gijom Apolliner.

There was always hot soup, coal, and warm stoves. The atmosphere was free and easy, although there were some rules: the ladies were not allowed to take their hats off and to smoke. On the other hand, they were allowed to dance on the tables.

Haim Sutin painted his best works at the cafe (at that time they cost a cup of coffee, nowadays they are sold for millions of dollars). Modigliani painted portraits of all the habitués of La Rotonde. His portraits cost nothing to friends and hot dinner of a shot of vodka for the other visitors of the café. Jean Cocteau distributed poems, making fun of the snobs, which were destined to enter the history…

When Paris welcomed “Russian seasons”, legendary Dyagilev and Nizhinsky came to La Rotonda to order music to young composers (Debussy, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Milhaud, Satie). Young poets Max Voloshin, Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Mayakovsky were also frequent guests of La Rotonde.

In 1903 Gabrielle Chanel sang there folk songs to the rapture of the audience. This is at La Rotonde, where she met her rich sponsor with whom she would live at aristocratic Vichi and become a fashion queen, a personification of style.

Between the two wars the café was favoured by the writers, such as Hemingway, Breton, Fitzgerald. They smoked, drank and created masterpieces…

Legends about “Dingo Bar” appeared in the 1920s. When a young poet or a painter came to “conquer” Paris he visited the café in the first place! Here Hemingway got acquainted with Fitzgerald. In 1924 the café was bought by the Americans who turned it into the meeting place of famous poets and painters.