Café · Saint-Germain-des-Prés · 6e arrondissement

Café de Flore

The buildingStill standing

Getting inIn, as a customer

What's there nowStill the same

A few doors from Les Deux Magots and part of the same Left Bank circuit. Later became more associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Address: 172 Bd Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris
Years: 1887–present

Illustration The Café de Flore today, white awning and red seats behind the terrace planters

The Flore today — same corner, same awning script.

Editorial illustration

The story

James Baldwin at the Flore

James Baldwin reached Paris in November 1948. He was twenty-four and had forty dollars, and the rooms he could afford were unheated. The cafés were heated, and they did not mind how long a customer sat over one coffee. That is the plain reason so much of his early work happened at café tables rather than at a desk. The City of Paris, in its walking account of his years here, names the Flore among the rooms he used.

The same account places his meetings with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre at these tables. The two of them had spent the Occupation writing upstairs a few years earlier, for the same reason Baldwin came: the café had heat.

A popular account of his Paris years also has Go Tell It on the Mountain taking shape here. That one is worth holding loosely. He worked across several rooms in Saint-Germain, no first-hand source fixes the drafting to this café, and he finished the novel in a Swiss Alpine village rather than in Paris at all.

The circuit around the corner

The Flore is one address on a short walk Baldwin made most days, and the neighbouring rooms carry the rest of the story:

Les Deux Magots, a few doors along the boulevard, where Richard Wright greeted him on his first day in the city.
Brasserie Lipp, across the street, where the two of them fell out in public in 1949 over the essay Everybody's Protest Novel.
Le Tournon, ten minutes south, the daily headquarters of the Black American writers around Wright in the early 1950s.
26 rue Saint-Benoît, the address most often given as Baldwin's own in 1953, on the street the Flore's side terrace faces.

Key facts

Opened: c. 1887, named for the statue of Flora across the boulevard
What it was: Café — editorial office, winter refuge, and Left Bank landmark
Neighborhood: Saint-Germain-des-Prés, on the corner of rue Saint-Benoît
Notable regulars: Apollinaire, Picasso, Prévert, Sartre and Beauvoir, Camus
Today: Still open; the Prix de Flore is awarded at its tables each November

Documentary photographs

Archival and present-day photographs, reproduced with rights verified.

The frontage and awning of the Café de Flore on the boulevard Saint-Germain — The Flore in 2011, a few doors along the boulevard from the Deux Magots — the pair that split Saint-Germain's custom between them.2011 · DIMSFIKAS, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

In images

Pen-and-ink illustration of the Café de Flore on its corner, terrace umbrellas open under the awning — The corner terrace under Saint-Germain's most famous awning.Editorial illustration

The Café de Flore today, white awning and red seats behind the terrace planters — The Flore today — same corner, same awning script.Editorial illustration

Timeline

1887
Opens on the corner of the boulevard, named for the Flora statue opposite.
1913
Apollinaire makes the ground floor the office of Les Soirées de Paris.
1920s
Part of the daily café triangle with Lipp and the Deux Magots for the expatriate crowd.
1940–44
Sartre and Beauvoir write through the Occupation at the first-floor tables — the café had heat.
1994
The Prix de Flore is founded, keeping the house in the literary business.
Today
Still open, terrace and awning intact, prices adjusted for fame.

On the map

Questions before you go

Why is the Café de Flore famous?

For its regulars rather than its coffee. Guillaume Apollinaire ran a magazine from the ground floor in 1913; Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir wrote at the upstairs tables through the Occupation because the café had heat and their flats did not; Pablo Picasso, Jacques Prévert and Albert Camus were regulars. The house has kept itself in the literary business since, awarding the Prix de Flore each November.

Did James Baldwin go to the Café de Flore?

Yes. The City of Paris names the Flore among the cafés the novelist James Baldwin used after he arrived in November 1948, and places his meetings with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre there. He worked in cafés because the rooms he could afford were unheated and the cafés were not.

Did James Baldwin write Go Tell It on the Mountain at the Café de Flore?

Probably not, or at least not only there. Popular accounts of Baldwin's Paris years attach the novel to the Flore's tables, but no first-hand source fixes the drafting to this café, he worked across several rooms in Saint-Germain, and he finished the book in a Swiss Alpine village, where he also settled on its title. Treat the Flore connection as atmosphere rather than authorship.

What is the difference between the Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots?

A few doors of the same boulevard, and different house legends. Les Deux Magots is the older literary address, associated with the Surrealists and, later, with James Baldwin's first day in Paris. The Flore's fame is mostly post-war and belongs to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. In the 1920s and again in the late 1940s both were stations on the same daily circuit, and most regulars used both.

Can you still visit the Café de Flore?

Yes. It still trades on its original corner at 172 boulevard Saint-Germain in the 6th arrondissement, terrace and awning script intact. It is a working café rather than a museum, and it is priced for its fame.

Related books

Recalled in the memoir

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway · 1964

A few doors from Les Deux Magots and part of the same Left Bank circuit. Later became more associated with Sartre and de Beauvoir.

Writers who knew this place

James Baldwin

American · American novelist and essayist who left Harlem for Paris at twenty-four with forty dollars, and wrote the books that made him the most quoted witness to race, sex and belonging in twentieth-century America.

Frequented by · 1948

Baldwin's Paris rooms were unheated and the cafés were not, which is the plain reason he worked in them, and the Flore is the one his early Paris years are most consistently attached to. The City of Paris's account of those years places his meetings with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre here, and a popular account has Go Tell It on the Mountain taking shape at its tables.

— Sur les traces de l'écrivain James Baldwin à Paris; Americans in Paris, James Baldwin: A Freedom Fighter Without a Home; Wikipedia — James Baldwin in France

Blaise Cendrars

Swiss-born; naturalized French in 1916 · The one-armed adventurer-poet of the Paris avant-garde — La Prose du Transsibérien, Moravagine, the memoir tetralogy — and the living writer Henry Miller ranked above all others.

Frequented by · 1917

Philippe Soupault's memoir places Cendrars among the regulars at Guillaume Apollinaire's Wednesday gatherings at the Flore in the spring of 1917, around six in the evening, and describes leaving the café at his side to walk the city.

— Philippe Soupault, Profils perdus (1963), the Apollinaire and Cendrars chapters

Simone de Beauvoir

French · French writer and philosopher whose novels, memoirs, and social analysis examined freedom, gender, responsibility, aging, and the material conditions that shape a life.

Frequented by · 1939–1945

The Café de Flore's own history identifies Simone de Beauvoir as one of the first writers to adopt the café's heated room after Paul Boubal took over in 1939. During the German occupation of Paris, she and Jean-Paul Sartre used the café as a regular place to work and meet people.

— Behind the scenes of a cult café: 1939–1945

Ernest Hemingway

American · Author of The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast; his pared-down style, developed in 1920s Paris, became the most imitated in American prose.

Ernest Hemingway wrote about Café de Flore in A Moveable Feast.

Guides featuring Café de Flore

Take them with you.

Ink and wash drawing of James Baldwin standing in a wet Paris street with a suitcase in one hand and a coat gathered against the rain, a Métropolitain entrance behind him and a domed church down the boulevard

GuideJames Baldwin’s Paris: A Self-Guided Walking Tour of the Left BankJames Baldwin arrived in November 1948 with forty dollars, and for nearly a decade his Paris fit inside one Left Bank neighborhood: Saint-Germain-des-Prés, its hotels, cafés and clubs. You can walk it all in an afternoon.Read the guide

Within walking distance

The Montana today, dark grey façade with a red cursive neon sign and red curtains behind black window frames

Nightclub · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Le Montana

A Saint-Germain bar of the postwar years, steps from the Café de Flore, that the City of Paris counts among the gay clubs James Baldwin frequented.

Visit the place

Apartment · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

26 rue Saint-Benoît

The Saint-Germain address where the City of Paris places James Baldwin as a likely resident in the early 1950s, around the publication of Go Tell It on the Mountain.

Visit the place

Café · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Les Deux Magots

The famous literary terrace where the expat crowd gathered. Ernest Hemingway came here, though he preferred La Closerie for actual work.

Visit the place

The same terrace in colour, the awning cream and green, glasses of beer on the tables in afternoon sun

Bar · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

La Reine Blanche

The cheap bar across the boulevard from the Café de Flore where James Baldwin drank through his first Paris years, and where he met Lucien Happersberger in 1949.

Visit the place

The Friday Letter

Paris, one address at a time.

The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.