Le Procope, café-restaurant on rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie since 1686

Le Procope, a café on rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie in the Monnaie quarter, was founded in 1686 by Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli. Having arrived from Sicily in 1670, he learned the coffee trade from an Armenian at the Saint-Germain fair, then set up opposite the Comédie-Française in a lavishly decorated shop.

In the eighteenth century Voltaire, Diderot, d’Alembert and Rousseau were regulars, and legend has the idea of the Encyclopédie born here. Benjamin Franklin is said to have prepared the alliance of 1778 here. During the Revolution Danton, Marat and Robespierre met here; in the nineteenth century, Musset, George Sand and Verlaine.

The café closed in 1890. The premises then housed various businesses, including a Bouillon Chartier, before being renovated and enlarged in 1957: the present restaurant, unrelated to the original café, reopened under the historic name. The Groupe Bertrand has owned it since 2016.

Between rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie and the Cour du Commerce-Saint-André, in the 6th arrondissement, the house serves brasserie cooking in rooms where the Declaration of the Rights of Man hangs on the wall, and now also runs a café.