Hemingway’s “home café” in Montparnasse, where he wrote The Sun Also Rises — a literary bastion whose tables still carry the names of Baudelaire, Zola and their heirs.
At a glance
La Closerie des Lilas sits on the Boulevard du Montparnasse in the 6th arrondissement, at the edge of the district that became the artistic capital of Paris between the wars. What began in 1847 as an open-air guinguette among lilac and chestnut trees is now a restaurant and bar carrying more than a century and a half of literary history.
History
The place was opened in 1847 by François Bullier, first named after a play and then, as Bullier planted lilacs around it, becoming the Closerie des Lilas. As Montparnasse filled with artists it drew the writers of the late nineteenth century — Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Émile Zola, Cézanne and Théophile Gautier — and, at the turn of the century, Guillaume Apollinaire.
Its most famous chapter belongs to the 1920s. La Closerie was Ernest Hemingway’s “home café”, where he completed the first draft of The Sun Also Rises, and where F. Scott Fitzgerald once read him an early draft of The Great Gatsby. Modigliani, Picasso, Ezra Pound and, later, Sartre and Beckett all passed through.
What you see
Set behind its terrace and greenery, the café keeps the intimate, wood-panelled feel of a Montparnasse literary bar.
Small brass plates are fixed to the tables, each engraved with the name of a famous regular — Baudelaire, Zola, Gautier, Balzac, Hemingway — so that guests still sit, quite literally, in named company.
Cultural significance
If Saint-Germain had Flore and the Deux Magots, Montparnasse had the Closerie. It is one of the anchor cafés of the Lost Generation, and Hemingway’s praise — “one of the best cafés in Paris” — sealed a reputation that runs unbroken from Baudelaire to Beckett.
Key facts
- Opened: 1847, by François Bullier, as a garden guinguette
- 19th-century regulars: Baudelaire, Verlaine, Zola, Cézanne, Gautier
- Lost Generation: Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises here; Fitzgerald, Pound, Modigliani
- Detail: brass name-plates on the tables honour former regulars
- Location: Boulevard du Montparnasse, 6th arrondissement
Practical information & getting there
The café is at the Observatoire end of Montparnasse. Nearest transport: Vavin (Métro line 4) or Port-Royal (RER B). It operates as a restaurant, brasserie and bar.
Sources & resources
- Sortiraparis — “La Closerie des Lilas, a literary bastion”
- Visit Paris Region — La Closerie des Lilas
- Travel by Art — “La Closerie des Lilas: Hemingway’s home away from home”
- Soundlandscapes — La Closerie des Lilas
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer
Share your photos of places: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.
Log in or sign up free to add a photoIs this page about you?
This page is read by travellers and heritage enthusiasts who find it on Google. Tell us how you are connected to this place and we will take it from there.