Closerie des Lilas

Closerie des Lilas Review

Now a pricey bar-restaurant, the Closerie remains a staple of all literary tours of Paris. Commemorative plaques are bolted to the bar as if they were still saving seats for their former clientele: an impressive list of literati including Zola, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Beckett, and, of course, Hemingway. (Hemingway wrote pages of The Sun Also Rises here and lived around the corner at 115 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.) Although the lilacs that once graced the garden—and shaded such habitués as Ingres, Whistler, and Cézanne—are gone, the terrace still opens onto a garden wall of luxuriant foliage. There is live music in the piano bar.