The Left Bank of Writers and Cafes

Paris, France

500 tickets 3.4 km · about 1 hr 40 mins · 11 stops · Premium walk How Walking Tickets work

This walk explores the Left Bank’s literary world, where cafés, publishers, and streets shaped modern writing from the late nineteenth century through the interwar years. From Polidor and the Odéon to 12 Rue de l’Odéon, Le Procope, Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore, Montparnasse, and La Closerie des Lilas, it traces the places where writers, artists, and exiles gathered. Here, café life became a setting for publishing, debate, collaboration, and the making of literary history.

The stops

01
Polidor
Polidor is a historic restaurant in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, founded in the nineteenth century and long associated with students, writers, and the Latin Quarter.
02
Le Café Voltaire
Le Café Voltaire was a café and restaurant on Place de l'Odéon in the 6th arrondissement, named for Voltaire and linked to the literary culture of the Odéon quarter.
03
12 Rue de l'Odéon
12 Rue de l'Odéon is the original site of Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company in the Odéon district of Paris, the bookshop and lending library founded in 1919.
04
Le Procope
Le Procope is a historic café on the Left Bank in Paris, founded in the seventeenth century and famed for its links to Enlightenment thinkers and later literary life.
05
Les Deux Magots
Les Deux Magots is a café at Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, famous for its twentieth-century literary and intellectual clientele.
06
Café de Flore
Café de Flore is a historic café on Boulevard Saint-Germain in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, renowned for its association with writers, artists, and philosophers.
07
Café de la Mairie
Café de la Mairie is a café on Place Saint-Sulpice in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, facing one of the major civic squares of the Left Bank.
08
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein refers to the Left Bank area associated with the American writer and collector Gertrude Stein, whose Paris salon shaped modern art and literature in the early twentieth century.
09
Le Select
Le Select is a historic café on Boulevard du Montparnasse in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, opened in 1925 and associated with the expatriate community.
10
La Coupole
La Coupole is a large brasserie on Boulevard du Montparnasse in Paris, opened in 1927 and celebrated as an icon of Montparnasse artistic life.
11
La Closerie des Lilas
La Closerie des Lilas is a historic café and restaurant near Montparnasse in Paris, famous for its terrace and its associations with Ernest Hemingway and other writers.