Le Café Procope Today

Today Le Café Procope is more than restaurant: it is also a museum of 18th century French history. Conveniently located in the heart of the 6th arrondisement, it is well worth a visit on your next trip to Paris.

With a lunch “Menu Formule” starting at 24€, beverage included, and a team of sufficiently English-speaking waiters, the Procope makes for a stress-free, pleasant, and highly atmospheric stop for the Anglophone guest in Paris. Kids are welcome and the staff has no trouble with patrons wandering the restaurant to seek out its many treasures. In fact they encourage it.

So don’t be shy! While waiting for your meal or once fortified, go on a hunt for these revolutionary artifacts and see what else you can uncover besides:

 

Look for

Marat’s Bell

in the Salon (dining room)

that bears his name.

Once you’ve found it…

Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793) was a revolutionary journalist and propagandist who printed his paper, l’Ami du peuple (Friend of the People), from a shop just across the back alley from the Procope. When he was not soaking in the bath, where he often languished due to a debilitating skin disease, Marat was most likely found here, at the Café Procope. But his presses never stopped humming. To inform him when the type had been set and the press was ready to run, Marat’s workers would ring this bell, attached by a rope strung over the alley from his press to the Café.

Look for the desk of

Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire.

Hint:

you’ll find it on the way to Les Commodités. 

Once you’ve found it…

Voltaire (1694-1778) was a famous French Enlightenment philosopher. He wrote against the monarchy as a student and was forced to leave France or go to prison. He fled to England where he discovered a new form of government called a Constitutional Monarchy. There, he experienced the meaning of such citizen rights as: freedom of religion; freedom from censorship; and the right to a fair trial. Volatire returned to France a spokesman for these ideals. He often came to the Café Procope to write as well as to discuss Enlightenment ideas with other philosophers. He always used the same red marble-top desk. One day Voltaire was arguing with the radical revolutionary, Hébert, who kicked at the desk with the heel of his shoe. Their argument must have been quite heated as the blow broke off a piece of the marble at the front. Do you see the broken piece? Can you find the desk of another Enlightenment philosopher just here?

Look in the Procope’s

Salon Cour de Rohan

for a replica of the most important

French 18^th century document.

Hint: It’s bigger than you might think.

Once you’ve found it…

La Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen is one of history’s first official charters to define basic human rights and civil liberties. Its 17 articles laid out a new vision for government in which the protection of individual human rights supplanted the authority of the king. Many of the reforms favored by the Enlightenment philosophers appeared in the Declaration, such as freedom of religion, freedom of the press, no taxation without representation, and the elimination of excessive punishments and arbitrary administration. La Déclaration was adopted by the French National Assembly on August 26, 1789, and became the preamble to the 1791 French Constitution.

Look for the chapeau (hat) of

Napoleon Bonaparte.

If you need help, ask the host or hostess:

“Où se trouve le chapeau de Napoléon?”

 

Once you’ve found it…

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) became the first Emperor of France after the French Revolution. Legend has it that when still a young man and soldier, he stopped into the Café Procope one afternoon and while waiting for his order, he removed his hat. Suddenly, he rushed out, no one remembers why, asking that the management hold onto his hat until he got back. He never came back and they still have the hat.

Time Traveler Tours recommends Le Café Procope as the place for a thematic lunch in their interactive StoryApp itinerary to the French Revolution: Beware Mme la Guillotine, A Revolutionary Tour of Paris.

Learn more about this unique approach to educational tourism at this website. Put Paris in the palm of your hand with Time Traveler Tours mobile iTineraries. Discover history with those who made it!

Le Procope

13, rue de l’Ancienne Comédie

Paris, 6ème

01-4046-7900



Images:

By Sarah Towle, 2011, with permission from Le Café Procope.