Parisian Life

The great brasseries of Montparnasse

In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway sang the praises of the great brasseries of the golden age, making Montparnasse the hang out for Americans in Paris. Let’s go back for a moment and explore these legendary places…

La Closerie des Lilas was originally a dancehall that opened its doors in 1847 and started life as a simple open-air café on the road to Fontainebleau. It became a place to be at the end of the 19th century: Léon Bloy holds court there, Paul Fort is its “poet prince” with his periodical “Vers et prose”, there you rub shoulders with Jarry, Fargue, Moréas, as well as “Baron” Jean Mollet, associate of Apollinaire and vice-curator of the collège de Pataphysique.

Closer to the corner with Boulevard Raspail, Le Dôme is the strategic centre for Monparnasse’s painters, who come to play billiards under the watchful eye of Father Chambon, a staunch Auvergnian.

Opposite is La Rotonde. Victor Libion bought this bistro in 1911, expanded it by adding the neighbouring butcher’s shop, and created an institution, such that when Charlie Chaplin landed in Paris in 1921 he demanded he spend his first moments in the capital here. Lenin and Trotsky are regulars, the Cubists hold their salon here, ether and cocaine are snorted… At the end of the Occupation, Libion was charged with trafficking cigarettes. To pay off the substantial fine, he was forced to sell his business…

Its neighbour, Le Select was founded in 1924. At first a bar servicing a purely American clientele, it had the significant advantage of being open all night. It became the secret haunt of the “lost generation” bringing together Hemingway, Fitzgerald… Today it closes at two in the morning. Sign of the times…

Last to appear on the scene of this family of great Montparnasse restaurants, La Coupole opened its doors in the 20s. In the beginning, two guys from the Auvergne, Fraux and Lafon, bought a timber yard on boulevard Montparnasse that was to be converted into a garage. For them, this place could be the site of one of the most spectacular restaurants of the Roaring Twenties. Thus, the proprietors ask their architects to conceive of a room over two-storeys as well as a terrace and a dance floor. Alas, the land is peppered with quarries and it is necessary to concrete the sub-soil at great expense. The name “Coupole” is a nod to its neighbours La Rotonde and Le Dôme. To decorate its pillars, local painters are invited to come and “make merry”. On 20 December 1927, the Coupole finally opened, with a bang: some 2500 guests came and polished off some 1200 bottles of champagne well before the evening drew to a close! Cocteau, Cendrars, Vlaminck, Man Ray, Maurice Sachs, and another Pierre Benoît come to admire the 1600 square metres of this grand new palace. At the time, Paris was truly one big party!