THE VIRTUAL WINE MUSEUM - LE MUSÉE VIRTUEL DU VIN

Opened in 1686, the Procope is a place crammed with history. It’s considered the oldest café in Paris. Over its life, it welcomed artists from all over Paris and the country’s biggest public figures. It was the meeting-place of the 18th century’s greatest intellectuals: Voltaire, Diderot, d’Alembert, Rousseau and Beaumarchais. Then revolutionaries replaced the Enlightenment philosophers. Marat wrote his orders there. A quotation from Camille Desmoulins adorns one of the walls, a reminder of its past: “This café isn’t decorated like the others with mirrors, gold leaf and busts, but with souvenirs of the Grands Hommes who frequented it and whose works would cover the walls if they weren’t tidied away.” Next, the great authors of the 19th century took over the place. George Sand, Alfred de Musset, Balzac, Paul Verlaine and Théophile Gautier were regulars.
 

Despite its renown, money was bad and the Procope was forced to close in 1890. It was sold at auction and rented to Théo Bellefonds in 1893. He would restore the café’s prestige. The rental contract stipulates that he must conserve the 18th-century wrought-iron balcony on the building’s façade. The Procope would soon return to its primary purpose, welcoming intellectual and literary circles which included Verlaine, Huysmans and Oscar Wilde. But, again, profits didn’t follow. Anatole France would write “the Café Procope is gone. It had much glory, but little money.” In 1890, when it was  auctioned, Atget photographed it – and not without a certain nostalgia. The façade informs us that you can buy wine here.
 

Before being renovated, enlarged and reclaiming its original name, the café hosted a “bouillon” (workers’ cafeteria) for several years – the Chartier, in the 1930s.