Café de Flore on Boulevard Saint-Germain
The Café de Flore is one of Paris’s iconic cafés, a discreet vestige of a bygone era.
This iconic establishment is located at the corner of Rue Saint-Benoît and Boulevard Saint-Germain, in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district. It owes its name to a statue of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers and fertility, which once adorned the opposite sidewalk.
Founded in 1887, the café quickly became a favourite meeting place for the intellectual elite of the time. However, it wasn’t until 1913 that it truly acquired its reputation as one of the most renowned literary cafés in Paris.
At that time, figures such as Guillaume Apollinaire, André Salmon, and their peers gathered there to publish Les Soirées de Paris, a literary and artistic review. Emerging artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and Léger contributed illustrations to this prestigious publication.
It was also at the Café de Flore that Apollinaire, alongside André Breton and Louis Aragon, laid the foundations of Surrealism movement in 1917.
The Mecca of Arts and Letters
The Café de Flore underwent a complete transformation in the 1930s, adopting the chic Art Deco style of the time that would define its aesthetic for decades to come.
The establishment became the preferred meeting place of the Parisian cultural elite, attracting prominent figures from the worlds of literature, art, film, and music, such as Giacometti, Picasso, Queneau, and Zadkine, who contributed to turn it into a cultural hub as early as 1939.
Under the direction of its new owner, Paul Boubal, the café later attracted personalities: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Eugène Ionesco, and Emil Cioran. Miroslav Siljegovic acquired the Café de Flore in 1984 and inaugurated a new look while preserving the Café de Flore’s cultural and artistic heritage. Finally, in 1994, Frédéric Beigbeder founded the Prix de Flore, a literary prize awarded each November at the café, and intended to reward promising young authors.
Directions: 6th district – no172 Boulevard Saint-Germain
Metro: Saint Germain des Prés on Line 4
Coordinates: Lat 48.853889 – Long 2.332500
