The “Arabian Coffee Tree” — Germany’s oldest coffee house, pouring since 1711, where Bach, Goethe and Schumann all took their coffee under a baroque doorway.
At a glance
Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum stands in the Kleine Fleischergasse in central Leipzig. Coffee has been served here since 1711, making it one of the oldest continuously working coffee houses in Europe — a peer of the Café Procope in Paris — and it is now both a café and a museum of coffee culture.
History
The house has poured coffee since 1711. Above its door sits a baroque relief from 1720 — an Ottoman figure handing a cup of coffee to a putto — that gave the place its name, the “Arab Coffee Tree”. Set in the heart of a great trade and music city, it drew the famous almost from the start.
Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann, Augustus the Strong, Christian Gellert, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Napoleon all stopped here, and from 1833 Robert Schumann and his DavidsbĂĽndler kept a regulars’ table. Today the upper floors house the coffee museum of the Leipzig City History Museum, spread over sixteen rooms; the cafĂ© reopened in July 2025 after a long restoration.
What you see
The baroque house-sign of 1720 over the entrance is the building’s signature, a sculpted scene of coffee arriving in Europe from the East.
Above the café, the museum fills sixteen rooms with three centuries of Saxon coffee culture — grinders, Meissen porcelain, roasters and brewing vessels.
Cultural significance
The Coffe Baum is a monument to the moment coffee became European, and to Leipzig’s double life as a city of trade and of music. That Bach and Schumann drank where visitors still do makes it a living link to the culture of the Baroque and Romantic city.
Key facts
- Serving coffee since: 1711 — among the oldest coffee houses in Europe
- Name: from a baroque relief of 1720 over the door
- Guests: Bach, Telemann, Goethe, Napoleon; Schumann’s regulars’ table from 1833
- Museum: Leipzig’s coffee museum, 16 rooms, over three centuries of coffee culture
- Reopened: July 2025, after restoration
Practical information & getting there
The cafĂ© is in the Kleine Fleischergasse, a short walk from Leipzig’s Markt. The coffee museum on the upper floors is free to enter; the cafĂ© serves on the ground floor.
Sources & resources
- Leipzig Travel — “Germany’s oldest coffee house has reopened”
- Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig — Museum Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum
- Visit Saxony — The Arabian Coffe Tree, Leipzig
- Mahler Foundation — Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum
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