The coffee shop - Europe's most famous cafes in paintings

Given how much time artists, musicians and writers spend in coffee shops, I'm surprised there are so few paintings of the famous ones. I love cafes myself, but I can confidently say that I have never been in any of the ones in this post. That's because every time I've walked past, they are crowded, like every tourist in town has decided to stop off there to find the ghosts.

Italy

The oldest cafe in Italy is Caffè Florian in Venice, which opened in 1720 in the Piazza San Marco, and which is shown above. Long before Casanova frequented it, cafes in the Ottoman lands and in London were regarded as dens of iniquity, because of their subversive politics and "vice." Why? Because Caffè Florian was that rare cafe that was open to women, which no doubt appealed to Casanova. Like all the cafes that follow below, they were immensely popular with the celebrities and intellectuals of their time and frequent targets for religious conservatives.

The watercolor below is of Caffè Greco in Rome. This cafe near the Spanish Steps opened in 1760, which is why its full name nowadays is Antico Caffè Greco. Casanova also frequented this cafe. But, it closed in late 2025 after a dispute over the rent and so far as I know it's still closed and may never reopen. Below is Küstler im Caffè Greco in Rom in 1856.

I'm unaware of any notable paintings of the many cafes in Milan or the Caffè Confetteria Al Bicerin in Turin, or Caffè Pedrocchi in Padua (both date back to the 18th century), or the more recent Caffè Gambrinus in Naples.

Paris

Café de la Paix - this café opened in 1862 in Le Grand-Hôtel de la Paix (today it's the InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hôtel). It is right next to the Palais Garnier opera house, on Place de l'Opéra, and built at the same time as part of Haussmann's renovation of Paris. In its day, Grand Hôtel was the largest hotel in the world and featured the world's first elevator. The cafe was a hangout for French writers and musicians like Victor Hugo, Massenet, Zola, de Maupassant, and many others, including Russians Tchaikovsky and Konstantin Korovin (below).

Café Procope - this also was a Casanova hangout because it was open to women. It opened in 1686 and hasn't always been a functioning cafe, but it was back then - frequented by Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau - and today it's a restaurant. The paintings and engravings of it are nothing special though.

The Pré Catelan - below is Henri Gervex's An evening at Pré Catelan, a cafe in the Bois de Boulogne that was built in 1905 and is still there. Celebrity diners have included Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Marcello Mastroianni, Yves Montand, and Burt Lancaster.

With the Impressionists there are in fact more paintings of cafes. However, although Edgar Degas painted the seedier side of Parisian cafe culture, his "cafe" scenes were actually staged in his studio using friends as models. The famous L'Absinthe, for example, supposedly in La Nouvelle Athènes, in Place Pigalle, was painted at his studio. The former café building was destroyed by fire in 2004 and demolished. Similarly, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec and van Gogh have some equally gritty Paris cafe scenes, but those cafes in Montmartre are long gone.

Across town, Renoir set some of his most famous paintings at the Maison Fournaise, which is still there in Chatou on the Seine, including Luncheon of the Boating Party (above) and Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise.

Cafes without noteworthy paintings include Les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and La Coupole in Montparnasse and many others that became famous for their association with the Lost Generation and the Surrealists, Anäis Nin and Henry Miller, Josephine Baker and more. But, we do have this painting of La Rotonde in Montparnasse by Russian Alexandre Jacovleff, who had emigrated to France:

Vienna

Café Central - this café opened in 1876 and Wilhelm Gause created this painting titled The Arkadenhof in the old Café Central premises in 1899. Pretty much everyone famous associated with Vienna enjoyed time here until World War II when it closed. It reopened in 1975 in a different part of the building and it's still there.

I am unaware of any paintings or drawings of the equally famous Café Frauenhuber (associated with Beethoven and Mozart, although back then it was a concert hall and restaurant), or Café Schwarzenberg (founded in 1861), or Café Landtmann (founded in 1873), or the newer (1936) Café Hawelka. All these cafes are still there. Then there is Café Griensteidl which unfortunately is now gone - it was near the Hofburg Palace - but we have a painting of it:

None of the cafes from Casanova's time in London, Prague, Madrid, Dresden and so on survive. So, instead, to finish, a few famous cafe paintings from other cities.

Arles

The Café de la Gare is located on the Place du Forum. A van Gogh favorite - the owners have remodeled the cafe to make sure it resembles the painting.

Seville

Maybe not a cafe but close - José Jiménez Aranda's A gathering in the courtyard of a Sevillian house (1889):