A Walking Tour Paris

with bright ceramic tiles sporting parrots and other fowl. Two of the most famous cafés in the entire city sit side by side: Les Deux Magots is at No. 6 Place St-Germain-des-Prés, while the Café de Flore is at No.172 Boulevard St-Germain. Les Deux Magots takes its name comes from the two wooden statues of Chinese commercial agents, known as magots, that adorn one of its pillars. The café still trades on its reputation as the meeting place of the city’s literary and intellectual elite. It was the favourite of artists and writers in the 1920s, including luminaries such as Ernest Hemingway who could be seen writing on its terrace. The café then became the heart of the fashionable existentialist philosophy movement in the 1950s. Café de Flore was another intellectual hangout in the 1950s, and its lovely Art Deco interior has changed little since that time. This is where Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir held court.