Europe’s CULTURE club
These exquisite cafes have attracted famous visitors from Voltaire to Byron and Trotsky to Dali (and the coffee and cakes aren’t bad either)
The continent is blessed with numerous fabled, centuriesold cafes – exquisite establishments where, as well as enjoying the perfect cappuccino and fancy piece of cake, you can learn about our shared European history. Ever since the mid-17th Century, when coffee houses first sprang in Europe, they have attracted pioneers and mavericks, people who started new cultural movements, and revolutionaries.
Unlike in a pub or bar, where your senses grow ever duller from alcohol, you can spend hours in a cafe with your companions, coffee sharpening wits and conversations. No wonder so many innovative ideas were born in the legendary cafes of Europe.
And it’s a miracle that – despite two world wars, two global pandemics and the Great Depression – so many historic cafes have survived, to be savoured by travellers, history buffs and cafe lovers alike.
CAFE AU REVOLUTION
Cafe Procope in Paris’s bohemian quarter of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, dates from 1686. Originally opposite the Comedie-Francaise theatre, its first regular customers were actors and during the following century it was the retreat of Enlightenment luminaries such as Voltaire, JeanJacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot (behind the first comprehensive encyclopaedia) and Benjamin Franklin. Next came French revolutionary firebrands, when the cafe witnessed heated debates between bloodthirsty figures such as Robespierre and Danton.
The Procope today has several rooms on two floors, all bedecked with mementoes of its stirring past. History enthusiasts can dine on ‘calf’s head casserole, 1686 style’ or ‘revolutionaries’ beef fillet’.
How to find it: 13 rue de l’Ancienne Comédie (procope.com).
CAPPUCCINO WITH CASANOVA
Opened on Venice’s Piazza San Marco in 1720, Caffe Florian witnessed the dawn of Venice’s age of hedonism with its masked balls and sex scandals. Naturally it became a haunt of that inexhaustible lover, Casanova. But the cafe was also frequented by creative types such as playwright Carlo Goldoni, who broke away from Italy’s conventional theatrical form, the commedia dell’arte.
Instead, he held up a mirror to society, reflecting the manners and foibles of the people around him, thereby revolutionising Italian theatre. His play The Servant Of Two Masters is famous today as the hit show, One Man, Two Guvnors. The Florian’s rich hot chocolate and ice creams are legendary, best enjoyed at an outdoor table. But a cappuccino will cost €12.
How to find it: 57 Piazza San Marco (caffeflorian.com).
ROMANTIC IN ROME
Founded by a Greek entrepreneur in 1760, Caffe Antico Greco in Rome quickly became a gathering place for artists, poets and writers.
On a street emerging from the Piazza di Spagna, below the Spanish Steps, this area was once called the ‘English quarter’, as it was the hub of Rome’s English expats. Romantic poets – Byron, Shelley and Keats – all spent time in the cafe in the early 19th Century (Keats died in a room nearby in 1821). And from 1853 to 1854 Thackeray, while staying in Rome to research a novel, spent many hours hobnobbing with artists at the cafe.
Today the cosy interconnecting rooms display paintings, drawings, photos and letters linked to illustrious past regulars. How to find it: 86 Via dei Condotti (anticocaffegreco.eu).
VIENNESE WRITERS’ WHIRL
The classic coffee house of the AustroHungarian Empire, Cafe Central opened in Vienna in 1876. The lush interior has an ornate vaulted ceiling and marble pillars, the cakes are irresistible and you can order coffees accompanied by delectable mounds of schlagsahne (whipped cream).
Now a major tourist attraction, in the Habsburg days it was home to intellectuals and revolutionaries.
Trotsky, who lived in Vienna before the First World War, relished the convivial atmosphere and played chess there with celebrated Austrian writers. It’s also where he enjoyed kaffee with fellow Bolshevik exiles – it’s believed he even took Stalin there in 1913.
How to find it: 14 Herrengasse (cafecentral.wien).
PRAGUE PERFECTION
Since 1881 Cafe Slavia in Prague has occupied the ground floor of the Lazansky Palace on the Smetana Embankment, alongside the Vltava River. With the National Theatre next door, it has long been popular among actors and playwrights.
In the 1920s, this meant the likes of Karel Capek, whose prophetic 1922 science fiction play, R.U.R., introduced the word ‘robot’ to the English language. Later, during the repressive communist era, it was the haunt of dissidents such as playwright Vaclav Havel. In 1989, he led the Velvet Revolution that ushered in democracy.
How to find it: 1012/2 Smetanovo Nabrezi (cafeslavia.cz).
DILLY-DALLY LIKE DALI
Spain’s premier literary cafe, Gran Cafe de Gijon in Madrid dates from 1888 and is famous for having revived the 16thCentury Spanish tradition of the tertulia, a social gathering to discuss culture and politics.
In the 1920s, three friends who met while lodging at a Madrid students’ residence would take refreshment at the cafe to discuss their artistic concepts
AT YOUR SERVICE: A waiter at the Caffe Antico Greco in Rome – painter Salvador Dali, filmmaker Luis Bunuel and poet Federico García Lorca. Try the black coffee with ice cream.
How to find it: 21 Paseo Recoletos (cafegijon.com).
BUDAPEST BREWS
New York Cafe in Budapest is a Neo-Renaissance-style establishment opened in 1894 in the New York Life Insurance Company’s palatial building. During the 1920s this was a showbiz hangout, and Hollywood moguls Louis B Mayer and Sam Goldwyn would visit to meet Hungarian talent. Alexander Korda was also a habitue before relocating to London in the 1930s, achieving fame with films such as
The Private Life Of Henry VIII. A glorious setting in which to sample its sumptuous desserts.
How to find it: 9–11 Erzsebet Korut (newyorkcafe.hu).
■ A History of Europe in 12 Cafes by Monica Porter is published by Pen & Sword Books.