Page 146 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Paris

144  P ARIS AREA B Y AREA

The Celebrated Cafés of Paris One of the most enduring images
of Paris is the café scene. For the
visitor, it is the romantic vision of
great artists, writers or eminent
intellectuals consorting in one of
the Left Bank’s celebrated cafés. For
the Parisian, the café is one of life’s
constants, an everyday experience,
providing people with a place to
tryst, drink and meet friends, or to
conclude business deals, or to
simply watch the world go by.
The first café anywhere can be
traced back to 1686, when the café
Le Procope (see p142) was opened.
In the following century, cafés
became a vital part of Paris’s social
life. And with the widening of the
city’s streets, particularly during the
19th century, and the building of
Haussmann’s Grands Boulevards,
the cafés spread out onto the
pavements, evoking Emile Zola’s
comment as to the “great silent
crowds watching the street live”.
The nature of a café was
sometimes determined by the
interests of its patrons. Some were
the gathering places for those
interested in playing chess,
dominoes or billiards. Literary
Outdoor seating at the busy Café de Flore gents gathered in Le Procope
u Hôtel Feydeau i Quai Voltaire houses and for the famous
de Brou 75006 and 75007. Map 12 D3. people who lived in many of
q Rue du Bac. them, making it an especially
13 Rue de l’Université 75007. interesting and pleasant street
Map 12 D3. q Rue du Bac. Formerly part of the Quai to walk along.
Closed to the public. Malaquais, then later known as The 18th-century Swedish
the Quai des Théatins, the Quai ambassador Count Tessin lived
This fine 18th-century mansion Voltaire is now home to some of at No. 1, as did the sculptor
was originally built as two the most important antiques James Pradier, famed for his
houses in 1643 by Briçonnet. In dealers in Paris. It is also noted statues and for his wife, who
1713, they were replaced by a for its attractive 18th-century swam naked across the Seine.
hôtel, built by Thomas Gobert Louise de Kéroualle, spy for
for the widow of Denis Feydeau Louis XIV and created Duchess
de Brou. It was passed on to of Portsmouth by the infatuated
her son, Paul-Espirit Feydeau Charles II of England, lived at
de Brou, until his death in 1767. Nos. 3–5.
The hôtel then became the Famous past residents of
residence of the Venetian No. 19 included the composers
ambassador. It was occupied by Richard Wagner and Jean
Belzunce in 1787 and became Sibelius, the novelist Charles
a munitions depot during the Baudelaire and the exiled Irish
Revolution until the restoration writer and wit Oscar Wilde.
of the monarchy in 1815. The French philosopher
It once housed the Ecole Voltaire died at No. 27, the
Nationale d’Admini stration Hôtel de la Villette. St-Sulpice,
(now in Strasbourg), where the local church, refused to
many of the elite in politics, accept his corpse (on the
economics and science were grounds of his atheism) and
once students. Today, the his body was rushed into
building is used by France’s Plaque marking the house in Quai Voltaire the countryside to avoid a
famous Science Po University. where Voltaire died pauper’s grave.

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