The street between the Luxembourg gardens and the Panthéon where the narrator of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises stops for coffee and a brioche, on the one morning the novel shows him going to work. He never names the café.
Rue Soufflot runs uphill from the Boulevard Saint-Michel to the Place du Panthéon, with the Jardin du Luxembourg at its lower end. It was laid out to give the Panthéon a clear approach, reached the rue Saint-Jacques around 1760, and was extended down to the boulevard in the second half of the nineteenth century. Since 1807 it has carried the name of Jacques-Germain Soufflot, who designed the building it points at.
In chapter V of Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, the narrator Jake Barnes walks down the boulevard to the rue Soufflot for coffee and a brioche. The horse-chestnuts in the Luxembourg gardens are in bloom. He reads the papers with the coffee and smokes a cigarette. The flower-women come up from the market to set out the day's stock, and students pass on their way up to the law school or down to the Sorbonne.
This is the only morning in the novel that shows him working. He finishes the coffee, takes an S bus down to the Madeleine, walks along the Boulevard des Capucines to the Opéra and up to his office, and puts in a good morning at the typewriter. Jake Barnes is a newspaperman. The book says so early and demonstrates it here.
Hemingway does not name the café. He gives the street, the order and the time of day, and nothing else. Cafés trade on the rue Soufflot now, some of them using the Soufflot name, but none has demonstrated a link to the one in the book.
The order itself is coffee and one brioche. A brioche is an enriched yeast bread made with eggs and butter, closer to a soft loaf than to a croissant, and it should not be pictured as one. The novel does not say what shape the brioche took, and it does not say what kind of coffee he drank.
In the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chestnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom. There was the pleasant early-morning feeling of a hot day.
Chapter V — Jake's breakfast, alone
In the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chestnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom.
The book's quietest meal: one man, one cup, the papers, and the chestnuts in bloom. Hemingway names the street and not the café, and the café has never been identified.
From The Sun Also RisesThe street is completed as far as the rue Saint-Jacques, opening a view to the Panthéon.
It is named for Jacques-Germain Soufflot, the Panthéon's architect.
The lower section is cut through to the Boulevard Saint-Michel.
Hemingway sets Jake Barnes's breakfast here in The Sun Also Rises, at a café he does not name.
Still the approach to the Panthéon, with cafés along it and the Luxembourg at the foot.
On the rue Soufflot, in the Latin Quarter between the Luxembourg gardens and the Panthéon. Jake Barnes is the novel's narrator. Hemingway names the street but not the café, and the café has never been identified.
Coffee and a brioche, taken with the newspapers and a cigarette. That is the whole order. A brioche is an enriched yeast bread made with eggs and butter, not a croissant, though the novel does not say what shape it was or what kind of coffee he drank.
You can have coffee on the rue Soufflot, and cafés operate along it today, some using the Soufflot name. None has shown any link to the café in the book. The street is the part that can be verified.
It is the only morning the book shows Jake Barnes at work. After the coffee he takes an S bus to the Madeleine, walks to his office by the Opéra, and does a morning's typing. Everywhere else in the novel he is drinking, travelling or waiting.
In the 5th arrondissement, running from the Boulevard Saint-Michel up to the Place du Panthéon. The Luxembourg gardens are across the boulevard at the lower end.
Jacques-Germain Soufflot, 1713 to 1780, the architect of the Panthéon. The street was laid out to give his building an approach, and has been named after him since 1807.
Setting of the story
Chapter V. Jake Barnes walks down the boulevard for coffee and a brioche before work — the only morning the novel shows him at his job. Hemingway names the street and not the café, and the café has never been identified.
Ernest Hemingway wrote about Rue Soufflot in The Sun Also Rises.
The university quarter on the hill above the river, named for the language its students once spoke, and the address of Ernest Hemingway's first Paris flat.
Visit the place
Richard Wright's Paris address for eleven years — the apartment where he wrote the books of his exile, marked since 1992 by a marble plaque.
Visit the place
Ernest Hemingway's daily shortcut and his hungry-day refuge — the park where he walked to avoid the smell of food, and studied the Cézannes in its museum on an empty stomach.
Visit the place
The café below the Senate that served as the unofficial headquarters of Black American writers in postwar Paris, with Richard Wright at the center and James Baldwin among the regulars.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
