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Restaurant · Place de l'Alma · 8e arrondissement

Chez Francis

The buildingStill standing
Getting inIn, as a customer
What's there nowChez Francis

Chez Francis remains an operating brasserie on the Place de l'Alma. Customers can eat inside or on the terrace; check the official site for current hours and reservations.

The brasserie on the Place de l'Alma that Cendrars scholarship names as one of the writer's regular stops — a Right Bank address in a café life mapped mostly through Montparnasse.

Address
7 Pl. de l'Alma, 75008 Paris
IllustrationChez Francis today — black awning, glassed-in terrace and hedge planters below the stone facade on the Place de l'Alma

The same corner today — black awning, glass, and the Alma traffic beyond.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

Chez Francis sits on the Place de l'Alma in the 8th arrondissement, at the point where the avenue Montaigne and the avenue George V meet the Seine. From its terrace the view runs across the Alma bridge to the Eiffel Tower. It is a classic Right Bank brasserie: a corner room, a zinc, a terrace facing the square.

Its literary interest comes from Blaise Cendrars. Claude Leroy's study La main de Cendrars catches him here in 1923, drinking champagne on the place de l'Alma, and Cendrars studies treat the brasserie as one of his characteristic stopping places. That makes it an unusual entry in his map of the city: most of the cafés attached to his name — the Rotonde, the Closerie des Lilas, the Dôme — cluster around the carrefour Vavin, while Chez Francis put him among the couture houses and embassies of the 8th.

The brasserie still operates on the square under the same name, one of the few tables in Cendrars's Paris where you can still order a drink at the address he knew.

Key facts

Address
7 place de l'Alma, at the foot of the Pont de l'Alma
What it is
Brasserie — named in Cendrars scholarship as one of his regular stops
Neighborhood
Place de l'Alma, 8th arrondissement

In images

The terrace on the Place de l'Alma, under its Haussmann corner building.Editorial illustration
The same corner today — black awning, glass, and the Alma traffic beyond.Editorial illustration

Timeline

    On the map

    Writers who knew this place

    Illustrated portrait of Blaise Cendrars

    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

    Claude Leroy's study La main de Cendrars catches him at Francis on the place de l'Alma in 1923, drinking champagne with a friend, and Cendrars studies treat the brasserie as one of his characteristic stops.

    — Claude Leroy, La main de Cendrars, ch. IV, La débâcle; Olivier Renault, Le Paris de Cendrars

    Within walking distance

    The theater's pale stone-and-concrete front in daylight, gilded reliefs above the marquee and trees along the avenue

    Theatre · Champs-Élysées

    Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

    The concrete temple of the avant-garde — where The Rite of Spring caused a riot in 1913, and the Ballet Mécanique caused another in 1926, with Ezra Pound shouting over the pianolas.

    Visit the place
    Bright colour photorealistic street view of avenue Marceau beneath a blue sky

    Apartment · Chaillot (16th)

    61 avenue Joséphine (now avenue Marceau)

    The address where the Jones family lived around 1868 to 1870, when the future Edith Wharton was a child of six or seven — the years that gave her fluent French and a lifelong sense that Europe was home.

    Visit the place
    Colour photorealistic view near 5 rue Francois-Ier beneath a bright blue sky

    Office · Champs-Élysées (8th)

    American War Relief Clearing House, 5 rue François-Ier

    The Paris address to which Edith Wharton told readers of The Book of the Homeless to send donations in kind — the clearing house through which American war relief reached the French charities.

    Visit the place
    Color present-day view of 54 rue de Chaillot

    Apartment · Chaillot (16th)

    54 rue de Chaillot

    The apartment Paul Gauguin and Mette Gad took after the birth of their first child — an expensive address near the Arc de Triomphe, and the setting of his 1875 portrait of his sleeping wife.

    Visit the place
    References

    References

    The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document Chez Francis, the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.

    1. 1chezfrancis-paris.com

      Website
      Used for

      Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Chez Francis page.

      View source

    2. 2OpenStreetMap

      Map data
      Used for

      Map data used to verify addresses, geographic coordinates, and the placement associated with Chez Francis.

      View source

    1. 3Le Paris de Cendrars

      Biography
      Olivier Renault
      Used for

      Biographical evidence used to verify chronology, relationships, and historical context connected to Chez Francis.

      View source

    2. 4The Paris Review — The Art of Fiction No. 38: Blaise Cendrars

      Periodical
      Used for

      Contemporary reporting or criticism used to document the historical reception and context of Chez Francis.

      View source
    i
    Why these sources are here

    These references provide the documented foundation for this page's history and context. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.

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