Rita Crane Photography: Paris / Historic Cafe / Latin Quarter / restaurant / architecture / night / Le Procope, Paris
Paris' OLDEST cafe, dating to the 1600's! The French Revolutionaries met here to plan their moves. Their American friends, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson wined and dined here, and enjoyed the exciting new beverage of the day: coffee! When it was first introduced into France coffee was considered a 'radical drink' and Madame de Pompadour apparently tried unsuccessfully to have it banned from court. !! The back entrance to this cafe is on the ancient Cour de Commerce St. Andre which has remained unchanged for centuries, and has some of Paris' oldest cobblestones that you can see quot;Bistro 1900" - a wonderful old bistro which is situated gives on Cour de Commerce St. Andre - right behind the Procope.
And here is some helpful information from a Flickr email I received:
"Le Procope was founded in 1648, yes, but it derives its importance from the fact that The Enlightement of the 18th century can be said to have been hatched there and that it continued to be a source of intellectual and artistic ferment until the end of La Belle Epoque (World War I, 1914 - 1919) when the Western world lost its innocence. Without this new step in thinking - the second one after the Renaissance - all of us might still have been humble servants to the Catholic Pope and the stifling religious views of the old Roman Catholic Church - comparable to the current views of orthodox Muslims and Amish (or any fundamentalist creed). It does not derive its importance from a visit of Benjamin Franklin, of course, because he went there precisely because of the reputation that Le Procope, at his age, still had."
This is one of the cafes from a set of nineteen images from my recent show "Historic Cafes of Paris" See the rest of them in my Cafes of Paris set. :o)
www.flickr.com/photos/44548980@N00/sets/72157600076275556/
Rita Crane Photography: Paris / Historic Cafe / Latin Quarter / restaurant / architecture / night / Le Procope, Paris
Paris' OLDEST cafe, dating to the 1600's! The French Revolutionaries met here to plan their moves. Their American friends, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson wined and dined here, and enjoyed the exciting new beverage of the day: coffee! When it was first introduced into France coffee was considered a 'radical drink' and Madame de Pompadour apparently tried unsuccessfully to have it banned from court. !! The back entrance to this cafe is on the ancient Cour de Commerce St. Andre which has remained unchanged for centuries, and has some of Paris' oldest cobblestones that you can see quot;Bistro 1900" - a wonderful old bistro which is situated gives on Cour de Commerce St. Andre - right behind the Procope.
And here is some helpful information from a Flickr email I received:
"Le Procope was founded in 1648, yes, but it derives its importance from the fact that The Enlightement of the 18th century can be said to have been hatched there and that it continued to be a source of intellectual and artistic ferment until the end of La Belle Epoque (World War I, 1914 - 1919) when the Western world lost its innocence. Without this new step in thinking - the second one after the Renaissance - all of us might still have been humble servants to the Catholic Pope and the stifling religious views of the old Roman Catholic Church - comparable to the current views of orthodox Muslims and Amish (or any fundamentalist creed). It does not derive its importance from a visit of Benjamin Franklin, of course, because he went there precisely because of the reputation that Le Procope, at his age, still had."
This is one of the cafes from a set of nineteen images from my recent show "Historic Cafes of Paris" See the rest of them in my Cafes of Paris set. :o)
www.flickr.com/photos/44548980@N00/sets/72157600076275556/