Colette
Frequented by · 1948–1954
The City of Paris names Le Grand Véfour a restaurant Colette favored. The restaurant reopened in 1948, a short walk from her Palais-Royal apartment, and a brass plaque marks her banquette beside Jean Cocteau's.
Le Grand Véfour
Still standing
In, as a customer
Still the same
The Palais-Royal restaurant Colette favored in her last years, a few doors from her apartment. A brass plaque still marks her seat.
- 17 rue de Beaujolais, 75001 Paris
- 1784–present
Illustration
The place, briefly
Le Grand Véfour occupies the same corner of the Palais-Royal arcade it has held since 1784, when it opened as the Café de Chartres. Its painted and mirrored rooms are among the oldest restaurant interiors in Paris. The City of Paris names it plainly as a restaurant Colette was fond of, and it stood barely a hundred steps from her door at 9 rue de Beaujolais.
The connection belongs to her final decade. The restaurant was closed from 1905 and reopened in 1948 under the chef Raymond Oliver, by which time Colette was installed above the garden and increasingly housebound. She and her neighbor Jean Cocteau took to it in those years, and the house set small brass plaques on their favored banquettes — a habit it extends to other regulars, from Victor Hugo to later writers and statesmen.
It remains a working restaurant rather than a museum, and one of the few places on Colette's Paris map where a visitor can still sit where she sat.
Key facts
- 17 rue de Beaujolais, in the Palais-Royal arcade
- 1784, as the Café de Chartres
- A restaurant she favored in her Palais-Royal years, from a few doors away
- The brass plaque marking her banquette, beside Jean Cocteau's
- Still operating on the original site
In images
Timeline
Opens in the Palais-Royal arcade as the Café de Chartres.
Closes; the rooms stand empty for decades.
Reopens as Le Grand Véfour under chef Raymond Oliver, near Colette's apartment.
Colette and Jean Cocteau become regulars; brass plaques mark their seats.
On the map
Writers who knew this place
Within walking distance
9 rue de Beaujolais
Colette's home above the Palais-Royal garden, and the address that made her its dame. She lived here from 1938 until her death in 1954.
Visit the place
Galerie Vivienne
A glass-roofed 1820s shopping arcade near the Palais-Royal, and home to the bookshop the City of Paris calls Colette's haunt.
Visit the place
Jardin du Palais-Royal
The colonnaded garden Colette watched from her Palais-Royal windows for the last years of her life, and the setting of her 1954 state funeral.
Visit the place
Passage Choiseul
The covered arcade where Louis-Ferdinand Céline grew up over his mother's lace shop — reborn in his novel Death on the Installment Plan as the Passage des Bérésinas, the gaslit 'gas jar' of its narrator Ferdinand's childhood.
Visit the placeThe 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.