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Number 6 of 20 in Paris

La Coupole

La Coupole opened five days before Christmas in 1927, and the whole of artistic Montparnasse came to the party. It has been the biggest and noisiest dining room on the Left Bank ever since.

The front of La Coupole on the boulevard du Montparnasse, under a red awning.
LPLT, CC BY-SA 3.0
What it is
Brasserie
Opened
1927
Area
Montparnasse
Nearest museum
Musée Rodin, 1.7 km

Paris this week

    What La Coupole is known for

    1. The room

      A single Art Deco hall the size of a station concourse, with green pillars whose tops were painted by the artists of Montparnasse in the 1920s, and a dome at its centre.

    2. The customers

      Cocteau, Giacometti and Josephine Baker in the first years, then Picasso, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Chagall and Édith Piaf, and after the war Hemingway, Henry Miller and Marlene Dietrich.

    3. The dance hall

      A ballroom opened in the basement on Christmas Eve 1928, and Paris danced there for decades.

    What to know

    • Opened on 20 December 1927 by Ernest Fraux and René Lafon
    • Its lamb curry has been on the menu for generations
    • A short walk from the Catacombs and the Montparnasse cemetery

    Where La Coupole is

    Address

    102 boulevard du Montparnasse
    75014 Paris, France

    Nearest station

    Vavin, on line 4

    Museums and sights nearby

    Distances are in a straight line from the restaurant.

    The canteen of Montparnasse

    In the 1920s Montparnasse was the quarter of painters, writers and foreigners, and its cafés were their living rooms. Two managers of one of those cafés, Ernest Fraux and René Lafon, opened their own on a coal yard along the boulevard and made it one of the largest brasseries in Paris.

    Everyone who mattered in the arts between the wars had a table here. The room was restored in the 1980s, and a bronze by Louis Derbré was set under the dome in 1993.

    La Coupole: common questions

    Where is La Coupole?
    At 102 boulevard du Montparnasse, in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. The nearest station is Vavin, on line 4.
    Which museums and sights are near La Coupole?
    Musée Rodin is 1.7 km away, Sainte-Chapelle is 1.9 km away, Musée d'Orsay is 2.0 km away. Distances are in a straight line from the restaurant.
    What is La Coupole known for?
    The room, The customers, The dance hall. The great Art Deco brasserie of Montparnasse, opened in 1927, where Picasso, Josephine Baker, Sartre and Hemingway all ate. One enormous room, with pillars painted by the artists of the quarter.
    When did La Coupole open?
    In 1927. Opened on 20 December 1927 by Ernest Fraux and René Lafon.

    What visitors say about La Coupole

    Rating from Google

    4.4

    16,695 ratings on Google

    Google's figures as read on 5 October 2026.

    Read every review on Google

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