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Restaurant · Palais-Royal · 1er arrondissement

Le Grand Véfour

The buildingStill standing
Getting inIn, as a customer
What's there nowStill the same

Still operating in the Palais-Royal arcade; small brass plaques mark the seats of former regulars, including Colette.

The Palais-Royal restaurant Colette favored in her last years, a few doors from her apartment. A brass plaque still marks her seat.

Address
17 rue de Beaujolais, 75001 Paris
Years
1784–present
IllustrationThe Grand Véfour dining room in colour, its painted panels, mirrors and red banquettes

The restaurant interior today; a brass plaque marks Colette's banquette.

Editorial 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

Address
17 rue de Beaujolais, in the Palais-Royal arcade
Opened
1784, as the Café de Chartres
Colette's connection
A restaurant she favored in her Palais-Royal years, from a few doors away
Look for
The brass plaque marking her banquette, beside Jean Cocteau's
Today
Still operating on the original site

In images

The dining room at Le Grand Véfour, a short walk from Colette's apartment.Editorial illustration
The restaurant interior today; a brass plaque marks Colette's banquette.Editorial illustration

Timeline

  1. 1784

    Opens in the Palais-Royal arcade as the Café de Chartres.

  2. 1905

    Closes; the rooms stand empty for decades.

  3. 1948

    Reopens as Le Grand Véfour under chef Raymond Oliver, near Colette's apartment.

  4. 1948–1954

    Colette and Jean Cocteau become regulars; brass plaques mark their seats.

On the map

Writers who knew this place

Illustrated portrait of Colette

Colette

French · The French novelist who wrote the Claudine books under Willy’s name, earned her independence on the music-hall stage, and made women’s private lives a serious literary subject.

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.

— Une balade sur les pas de Sidonie devenue Colette; Le Grand Véfour — official site

Illustrated portrait of Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

French · Poet, novelist and playwright who spent sixteen years in an apartment on the Place des Vosges that is now his museum, wrote a novel about Notre-Dame that shamed France into repairing the cathedral, spent nineteen years in exile for opposing the emperor Napoleon III, and was buried in the Panthéon — the Paris monument where France buries its most honoured dead — in 1885 after a funeral that brought roughly two million people into the streets of Paris.

Frequented by

The restaurant lists Hugo among its historic regulars and records what he ordered: vermicelli and lamb, unvaryingly. His is one of the five tables the house says still stand in their original places.

— Le Grand Véfour — official site

Within walking distance

The 9 rue de Beaujolais frontage in colour, its doorway, street lamp and Palais-Royal wall sign

Apartment · Palais-Royal

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
The Galerie Vivienne passage in colour, mosaic floor, shopfronts and glass roof

Landmark · Vivienne

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
The Palais-Royal garden gates and colonnade in colour, clipped trees and gravel walks beyond

Park · Palais-Royal

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
The Passage Choiseul in color — shopfronts and glass roof along the covered gallery

Street · Passages couverts

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 place
References

References

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

  1. 1Une balade sur les pas de Sidonie devenue Colette

    Website
    Ville de Paris
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Le Grand Véfour page.

    View source

  2. 2Le Grand Véfour — official site

    Website
    Le Grand Véfour, Paris
    Used for

    The restaurant's own account of the house, listed as a monument historique, and of Colette being carried down from the flat above to dine in her last years.

    View source

  1. 3A Brief History of Paris's Great Restaurants: Le Grand Véfour, a Jewel of Neo-Classical Art

    Periodical
    Sortiraparis
    Used for

    A history of the restaurant: the Café de Chartres opened under the Palais-Royal arcades in 1784, its eighteenth-century rooms, and Raymond Oliver's tenure.

    View source

  2. 4OpenStreetMap

    Map data
    Used for

    Map data used to verify addresses, geographic coordinates, and the placement associated with Le Grand Véfour.

    View source
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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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