The Cafe Cafe in France has been around for a hundred years.

Nurture the social trend of thought and enlighten the artistic inspiration

In the French capital Paris, it is not difficult to find historical sites and cultural landmarks. Perhaps the plain-looking cafe around you used to be frequented by Picasso, Dali, Monet, Chopin, Voltaire and even Napoleon. Wandering among the Cafe Cafe in Paris, the splendid culture, art and history of France seem to be within reach.

Time-honored cafes sell fame

Balzac, a great French writer who is good at writing about social attitudes, once wrote: "the counter of the cafe is the parliament of the people." The French Revolution, the Enlightenment, Existentialism and other political, social and cultural thoughts all moved from the cafe to the society. Prokop Cafe is the oldest coffee shop in existence. The simple and elegant traditional decoration is still maintained here. Its former regulars include 18th century European Enlightenment thinkers Voltaire and Rousseau, where Diderot, the author of the world's first encyclopedia, wrote works that influenced the process of revolution and social development in Europe and the United States.

The Cafe "Flower God" is one of the famous cafes in Paris, located on the left bank of the Seine in Paris, surrounded by many universities and research institutes. It opened in 1865 and is famous for receiving people from cultural and art circles. Picasso, Sartre, Breton and the politician Trotsky all drank coffee there. When Zhou Enlai was in France in the 1920s, he often went to the "Flower God" to drink coffee and talk about politics.

The cafe has a deep relationship with literature and even has a literary scholarship. It reserves a special seat for the winners on the second floor for a year, and displays a coffee cup engraved with the winner's name forever in the cafe. Among the most famous guests are existentialist masters Sartre and Beaufort. So far, they have sat together for coffee, and the fixed table where they discuss academic issues is still a favorite of the guests. In addition, Duras and Xu Zhimo, the authors of the French novel Lover, often come here.

During the French Revolution, the cafe around the palace was a place for political gatherings, and until the 20th century, it was the preferred place to discuss politics. It is said that Napoleon before his fortune used an army cap as collateral for his debts. At a time when the French art trend was changing with each passing day in the 19th century, there were many famous cafes around the Grand Opera House, such as the Cafe for Peace, where Bizi, Liszt, Chopin and others stayed. Some of the cafes in Montmartre Heights are meeting places for Picasso, Dali, Monet, Renoir and others.

The contest between a big cup and a small cup

When you drink coffee in Paris, you often feel that the cup sent by the waiter is smaller than that used when drinking coffee in other countries. It's not that Parisians are stingy, but that you drink too much coffee at a time, because the French may drink a lot of cups of coffee from morning till night. Some locals boasted to the Global Times that they could drink more than ten cups of coffee at the end of the day. According to historical records, Voltaire could drink 70 cups of coffee a day at the Prokop Cafe.

With the changes of the times, the functions of restaurants and bars were combined with cafes, and later some cabaret performances began to enter cafes. The combination of song and dance halls and cafes began to appear in the 19th century, such as the "Black Cat Coffee Song and Dance Hall" around Montmartre Heights. Since then, American coffee and Starbucks chains have gradually "invaded" France, with young people beginning to like large cups of coffee with cream and various flavors, while the old school continues to drink small cups of concentrated Italian coffee.

Small cafes compete for creativity

Because of its reputation, the prices of big-name cafes in Paris are also a little higher. In the "Flower God" cafe, it costs about 5 euros to order the most common cup of coffee, which is the price of two cups in an ordinary cafe. In the clove cafe patronized by American writer Ernest Hemingway, a cup of coffee costs nearly 9 euros. In order to compete with celebrity cafes, their peers next door sold ideas. The table in the cafe called Happy hour is eye-catching: the red iron round coffee table is the size of a badminton racket and two cups of coffee are crowded. This is the business philosophy given by the cafe operator: what you want to drink coffee here is the feeling of being alone. With creativity, this place is often full of friends.

According to a survey by a tourism department, most people's answer to the question "what is the most attractive thing in Paris" is not the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower, but the cafes scattered on the streets of Paris. (Chen Shuang)

(responsible Editor: Leo)