Café de la Paix

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The Café de la Paix ( Café of Peace ) is the oldest surviving and most renowned café in Paris . It is located in the 9th arrondissement .

Café de la Paix (1890)

History of origin

The Café de la Paix

The Café de la Paix is part of what is now the InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel , because it is on the ground floor of this hotel. The entire building was commissioned by the banker and real estate owner Émile Pereire , who had often worked with the architect Alfred Armand. Armand designed the entire building of the Grand-Hôtel de la Paix , which includes the Café de la Paix . The entire block in which the hotel building is located was designed by Charles Garnier . After construction began in April 1861, the hotel was completed in July 1862 after a construction period of 15 months. While the Grand Hotel only opened its doors on July 15, 1862, the Café de la Paix was inaugurated on May 5, 1862. It was initially intended to serve the guests of the Grand Hotel, but was also open to other guests. The glamorous opening of the café by Empress Eugénie (wife of Napoleon III ) with music and Jacques Offenbach as conductor took place even before the nearby opera had received its dome. At the time of the opening, Baron Haussmann's radical urban renewal was just coming to an end.

Furnished in the style of the Second Empire with rooms such as the Café Opera and Carré Opera , the guests of the 1867 World's Fair flocked here between April 1, 1867 and November 3, 1867. It has already been mentioned by name in the German-language guide for the world exhibition. The nearby Paris Opera was only inaugurated on January 5, 1875. The proximity to the opera brought personalities such as Oscar Wilde (1898), Jules Massenet , Josephine Baker , Émile Zola , Guy de Maupassant and Ernest Hemingway (he wrote parts of The Sun Also Rises here in 1926 ) as guests. Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi made parts of the sketches of the Liberty statue here . The café was first renovated in 1939. On August 25, 1944, a German shell hit the hotel, but the fire that broke out was quickly extinguished by the hotel staff. The café and hotel were classified as a historic monument by the French Ministry of Culture on August 22, 1975 . In 2003 it was renovated again. In 2005, the café began its series of design desserts in homage to the fashion capital Paris.

Inscription in the Café de la Paix

Location and importance

The Café de la Paix is not located on the Rue de la Paix , but is named after the Grand Hotel, which in turn is located near the luxury street Rue de la Paix . The official address is Place de l'Opera No. 5 in the 9th arrondissement. It overlooks the Paris Opera and Boulevard des Capucines , one of Paris's Grands Boulevards . It is the last remaining café from the 19th century. in Paris and similarly known as the Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots . The metro lines 3, 7 and 8 operate near the stop Opéra .

Others

The café is sung about by Horst Winter in the hit Im Café de la Paix in Paris (text: Heino Gaze , music: Fritz Schulz-Reichel ; original 1949), later cover versions were by René Carol (1950), Gerhard Wendland , Detlev Lais and Gitta Lind (1951).

Web links

Commons : Café de la Paix  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ FOCUS online, Europe's coffee houses, Café de la Paix, Paris: Where elegance speaks French
  2. ↑ Derek Lindstrum, Towers and Collonades , 1999, p 128
  3. ↑ Guide to the Paris World Exhibition 1867, 1867, p. 18
  4. ↑ in the novel there is the passage "After we finished the lunch we walked up to the Café de la Paix and had a coffee" (page 40)

Coordinates: 48 ° 52 ′ 15 ″  N , 2 ° 19 ′ 54 ″  E