Spotlight On: Café de la Paix

Located across from the Opéra de Paris and designed by Charles Garnier, the same architect who built the future setting for the legendary novel and musical, The Phantom of the Opera, the Café de la Paix still stands proudly in the heart of Paris. Opened in 1862, preceding the grand opening of the stunning Opéra Garnier in 1875, the café gained monumental success and popularity once it became a designated meeting spot for opera-goers. Its elegant architecture and convenient locale also attracted individuals of high notoriety over the years, including the French writers Marcel Proust, Guy de Maupassant and Émile Zola, the stylish Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde, the French playwright Tristan Bernard, and the American expatriate Ernest Hemingway. Legend tells that it was sitting in the Café de Paix, where Hemingway penned lines for The Sun Also Rises, providing his future readers with an observant view into the intricacies of the Parisian café lifestyle he and his fellow artistic companions usually found themselves entertaining while living in Paris.
 
Accompanied by its Grand Hotel, the café still holds the elegance that was once clearly evident back when the carefully designed walls and creatively manufactured ceilings housed both excited Parisians gossiping about the grand performances displayed at the Opéra and the passionate minds of Wilde, Proust and Hemingway. Diners still enjoy such French classiques foie gras and beef tartare. A historical landmark not only for its magnificent design and well-known visitors, the Café de la Paix has earned its location in the heart of Paris by epitomizing Parisian lifestyle and culture for nearly a century and a half. –Nicole Ellul
 
Café de la Paix
12, boulevard des Capucines
75009 Paris, France
Tel: + 33 (0)1 40 07 36 36
 
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