Le Dôme Café

Café du Dôme in 2006

Le Dôme Café (French pronunciation: [lə dom]) or Café du Dôme is a restaurant in Montparnasse, Paris. From the beginning of the 1900s, it was renowned as an intellectual gathering place. It was widely known as "the Anglo-American café."

Opening in 1898, it was the first such café in Montparnasse. It "created and disseminated gossip, and provided message exchanges and an 'over the table' market that dealt in artistic and literary futures."^[1] It was frequented by the famous (and soon to be famous) painters, sculptors, writers, poets, models, art connoisseurs and dealers. Le Dôme later became the gathering place of the American literary colony and became a focal point for artists residing in Paris's Left Bank.

A poor artist used to be able to get a Saucisse de Toulouse and a plate of mashed potatoes for $1. Today, it is a top fish restaurant (the Michelin Guide once gave it one star), with a comfortably old-fashioned decor.^[2] The food writer Patricia Wells said, "I could dine at Le Dôme once a week, feasting on platters of briny oysters and their incomparable sole meunière."^[3]

Address[]

Le Dôme Café in the 20th century

108 bd. Montparnasse, Paris, 75014
Closest Métro: Vavin

Dômiers[]

The term Dômiers was coined to refer to the international group of visual, and literary artists who gathered at the Café du Dôme, including:

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)
Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975)
Robert Capa (1913–1954)
Leonora Carrington (1917–2011)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004)
Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
Constant Detré (1891–1945)
Max Ernst (1891–1976)
Leonor Fini (1907–1996)
Tsuguharu Foujita (1886–1968)
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
Ida Gerhardi (1862–1927)
Khalil Gibran (1883–1931)
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
Elmyr de Hory (1906–1976)
Youssef Howayek (1883–1962)
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944)

Moïse Kisling (1891–1953)
Eva Kotchever (1891-1943)^[4]
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924)
Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951)^[5]
Sándor Márai (1900–1989)
Henry Miller (1891–1980)
Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920)^[6]
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977)
Méret Oppenheim (1913–1985)
Jules Pascin (1885–1930)
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
Man Ray (1890–1976)
Louis Schanker (1903-1981)
Chaim Soutine (1893–1943)
Ernesto Sábato (1911–2010)
Ré Soupault (1901–1996)
Gerda Taro (1910–1937)
Mika Waltari (1908–1979)

Literature[]

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1934)
Elliot Paul, The Mysterious Mickey Finn: or Murder at the Cafe Du Dome (1939)
Ernest Hemingway: references members of the Parisien literary scene meeting at the Dôme in The Torrents of Spring (1926); The Sun Also Rises (1926) and With Pascin at the Dôme in A Moveable Feast (1964)^[7]
"Paris", lyrics by Édith Piaf
Aleister Crowley's magical retirement frequenting Du Dome^[8]
Simone de Beauvoir, She Came to Stay (1943)
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason (1947)
Ernesto Sábato, Abaddon el Exterminador (1976)
Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus (1977)
W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944)