
— the room the twentieth century thought out loud in.
“The corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue Saint-Benoît, where Paris has been ordering coffee since 1887. Red leatherette, mahogany, mirrors that have not moved much since the 1939 redesign. Sartre and Beauvoir wrote here for years at the same upstairs table, a few feet from where Camus, Picasso, and Hemingway also passed long afternoons. The café still opens at dawn and stays open until nearly two the following morning, every day of the year. Tourists come for the photograph. Locals still come for the omelette and the hot chocolate.

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Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
Café de Flore sits at 172 Boulevard Saint-Germain in the sixth arrondissement of Paris, on the corner of Rue Saint-Benoît in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood. It opened around 1887, during the Third Republic, and took its name from a sculpture of Flora, Roman goddess of flowers, that once stood across the boulevard. The Église Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the oldest church in Paris with a bell tower dating to the eleventh century, sits a three-minute walk west. The café opens from seven-thirty in the morning until nearly two the following morning, every day of the year. Métro Saint-Germain-des-Prés on Line 4 lies across the street.
The interior took its current shape after Paul Boubal acquired the café in 1939; his family ran it for over four decades. The signature elements have barely shifted since: red leatherette banquettes, mahogany paneling, a black-and-white tile floor, and tall mirrors that double the small ground-floor room. The upstairs salon, where Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir kept a regular table through the 1940s and wrote large portions of their work, holds the same banquettes in a tighter geometry. Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, and Ernest Hemingway all passed through these rooms. The mahogany has darkened a half-shade since France's café smoking ban took effect in 2008.
The café serves from seven-thirty in the morning until nearly two the following morning, every day of the year. The ground floor takes walk-ins; the upstairs room is the quieter perch and the one Sartre wrote in. The long-running order is an omelette, a Welsh rarebit, or the house hot chocolate, served in a small pitcher with cream on the side. Prices are higher than the brasserie around the corner; the room is the reason. The Prix de Flore, a French literary prize founded by novelist Frédéric Beigbeder in 1994, is awarded here each November. Métro Saint-Germain-des-Prés on Line 4 sits across the street.