Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

One day, years later, I met Joyce who was walking along the Boulevard St.-Germain after having been to a matinee alone. He liked to listen to the actors, although he could not see them. He asked me to have a drink with him and we went to the Deux-Magots and ordered dry sherry although you will always read that he drank only Swiss white wine.
–Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast

Two of the most iconic literary cafés in the world, Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots are nestled very close together on Boulevard Saint-Germain on the Left Bank of Paris. They are not merely places to sit down and have coffee; they are living symbols of Parisian intellectual life through the ages.

Great minds gathered have here—from Oscar Wilde, Picasso, Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway to Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. Ideas were exchanged, manifestos drafted, and the world changed idea by idea.

I always have the idea when I sit outside Cafe de Flore with a pot of Marco Polo tea from Maria…