Which is the oldest café in France?

Le Procope on the rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie is the one every published account dates earliest, to 1686, and it prints the year itself. No deed or archive record has been read behind it, so the year rests on histories of the Parisian café. The Café de la Table Ronde at Grenoble gives 1739.

Why is Le Procope out of the Top 100?

Because the drinking stopped. The café Cutò opened closed in 1872, and the rooms were leased to a private artists' club, then ran as a restaurant, then in the 1920s as a café called Au Grand Soleil before the old name returned; English Wikipedia dates the house trading today to 1957. The 1686 stands, the unbroken run does not.

Is Au Chien qui Fume really from 1740?

Nothing supports it. The year sits in a summary box on French Wikipedia with nothing cited under it, the house does not repeat it, and the Ministry of Culture's notice dates the building to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, put up when the street was cut through to Les Halles, with a café taking the ground floor.

What does a monument historique listing actually prove?

That the state thinks something is worth keeping, and what that something is. At the Chien qui Fume the inscription of 23 May 1984 covers the shopfront with its four glass panels of smoking dogs and the wooden counter carved with more of them. It dates fabric and decoration, never a licence or a landlord.

Can you drink in these houses without eating?

Le Procope answers it plainly: the coffee room opens without a reservation from three until six on weekdays, with drinks priced by the glass. The Table Ronde runs as a café and brasserie from nine in the morning. At the Chien qui Fume nobody we can read says so in words, and the page says that rather than assuming.

3 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026

The oldest pub in France

The short answer

Oldest claim

Le Procope

Says 1686. The first record is 1686.

Grade A · Documented

By claim and by record the earliest French date on this list belongs to the same house: Le Procope in Paris, where the Sicilian Procopio Cutò moved his coffee business into a former bath house in 1686. Every published history of the Parisian café gives that year and no archive document has been read for it. What the plaque outside adds does not hold — the original café shut in 1872, and the rooms were a private club, a restaurant and a café called Au Grand Soleil before the old name went back over the door.

France dates its drinking rooms through the state's inventory of buildings, which is thorough, public and almost never about drink. The Ministry of Culture's register of historic monuments describes what survives — a shopfront, a carved counter, a staircase, a date of construction — and two of the three houses here are inscribed in it: Le Procope in part on 20 January 1962, and Au Chien qui Fume's front and interior fittings on 23 May 1984. Neither notice says who was pouring. That is why the register works better here as a check than as a source: at the Chien qui Fume it is the notice, not the house, that disposes of the 1740 the French encyclopaedia carries in a summary box, by recording that the rue du Pont-Neuf was cut through in the second half of the nineteenth century to serve Les Halles and that number 33 was built for it. The institution itself is the café, which arrived in Paris as a new kind of room for a new drink: coffee had been sold in taverns, and Cutò served it in porcelain on marble tables under mirrors and chandeliers. The word still covers both the drink and the room, and all three houses here cook as well as pour — which is a question about them rather than an objection to them.

A Paris bath house, a clockmaker’s shop and a counter at Les Halles

Le Procope is the one with the reputation. Cutò, a Sicilian who had taken over an Armenian’s lemonade stall on the rue de Tournon, fitted out a former bath house in 1686 with mirrors, chandeliers and marble tables; the Comédie-Française opened opposite three years later and made his fortune, and the street carries the theatre’s name to this day. Voltaire, Diderot, Franklin and Jefferson were customers. Café de la Table Ronde at Grenoble is the quieter case and the better story: a master confectioner named Caudet bought the clockmaker François Dagonneau’s shop on the place Saint-André and opened a café in it in 1739, when the city held twenty thousand people. It was the café Caudet, then the Flandrin from 1758, then the Table Ronde from 1797. Its back room served the resistance until the German authorities shut it on 4 February 1944 and arrested the landlady, Marie Pollini, with a number of the regulars. Au Chien qui Fume is the youngest and the most protected, known for the four smoking dogs on the glass outside and the ones carved into the counter within.

What the state’s inventory will and will not settle

Two of these three houses are inscribed as historic monuments and neither inscription helps with a founding date, because that is not what the notices are for. Le Procope’s, of 20 January 1962, covers an eighteenth-century house — younger, on its own reading, than the café it holds. The Chien qui Fume’s, of 23 May 1984, covers a shopfront and a carved wooden counter, and the description around it is what dismantles the house’s supposed 1740. Grenoble has no notice at all, so the Table Ronde’s year comes through French Wikipedia and a local newspaper account of January 2023, which is a C on this site whatever the year says. The order in which those tests are worth applying is set out in how historians date an old pub, and why a café is weighed on the same terms as a tavern in inn, tavern or alehouse.

The break the plaque does not mention

Le Procope’s wall claims an unbroken run, and the interesting thing about the house is that it did not have one. The café closed in 1872. The rooms were leased for a private artists’ club, became a restaurant, and in the 1920s a café called Au Grand Soleil, until somebody worked out what the old name was worth; the present house is dated to 1957 and was refitted in an eighteenth-century manner in 1988 and 1989. Nothing about that makes the 1686 false, and no historian argues otherwise. It is why Le Procope is graded A, kept out of the ranking, and given a page that says both things in the same breath — a judgement recorded in full on the methodology.

Where France sits in the wider list

Three houses is very thin for France, and the reason is ours. A category rule written early in this research excluded restaurants by name, and Le Procope was on that list until 12 September 2026; when it came off, the country had a page. Rouen, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg and the estaminets of the north are all unworked here. For the nearest comparisons, see the oldest pubs in Belgium and Spain, both of which date their houses through city registers rather than national ones. The full international ranking is at the top 100 oldest pubs.

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The contenders, oldest claim first

ClaimProof

Le Procope
Grade A
Paris, Île-de-France
Le Procope dates itself to 1686, and so does most of what is written about it. Procopio Cutò, a Sicilian who had taken over an Armenian's lemonade stall on the rue de Tournon, moved his business that year into a former bath house on the rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain-des-Prés, fitted it with mirrors, chandeliers and marble tables, and sold coffee in porcelain cups — a drink that had been served in taverns until then.
Claims 1686; first recorded 1686.
Café de la Table Ronde
Grade C
Grenoble, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
French Wikipedia, following a local newspaper account of January 2023, records that the master confectioner Caudet bought the clockmaker François Dagonneau's shop on the place Saint-André and opened a café in it in 1739, when Grenoble held twenty thousand people; it was the café Caudet, took the name Flandrin in 1758 and Table Ronde in 1797. The composer Antoine Renard is said to have written the music of Le Temps
Claims 1739; no early record found.
Au Chien qui Fume
Grade C
Paris, Île-de-France
The 1740 comes from French Wikipedia, which carries it in a summary box with nothing cited behind it, and the house's own site does not repeat it: that site says only that it has cooked in the French tradition for twenty-five years. The Ministry of Culture's notice for the building, which protects it, is plainer still — the rue du Pont-Neuf was cut through in the second half of the nineteenth century to serve Les
Locally dated 1740; no early record found.

The photographs above are other people's work, used under open licences. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits.

Common questions

Which is the oldest café in France?: Le Procope on the rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie is the one every published account dates earliest, to 1686, and it prints the year itself. No deed or archive record has been read behind it, so the year rests on histories of the Parisian café. The Café de la Table Ronde at Grenoble gives 1739.
Why is Le Procope out of the Top 100?: Because the drinking stopped. The café Cutò opened closed in 1872, and the rooms were leased to a private artists' club, then ran as a restaurant, then in the 1920s as a café called Au Grand Soleil before the old name returned; English Wikipedia dates the house trading today to 1957. The 1686 stands, the unbroken run does not.
Is Au Chien qui Fume really from 1740?: Nothing supports it. The year sits in a summary box on French Wikipedia with nothing cited under it, the house does not repeat it, and the Ministry of Culture's notice dates the building to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, put up when the street was cut through to Les Halles, with a café taking the ground floor.
What does a monument historique listing actually prove?: That the state thinks something is worth keeping, and what that something is. At the Chien qui Fume the inscription of 23 May 1984 covers the shopfront with its four glass panels of smoking dogs and the wooden counter carved with more of them. It dates fabric and decoration, never a licence or a landlord.
Can you drink in these houses without eating?: Le Procope answers it plainly: the coffee room opens without a reservation from three until six on weekdays, with drinks priced by the glass. The Table Ronde runs as a café and brasserie from nine in the morning. At the Chien qui Fume nobody we can read says so in words, and the page says that rather than assuming.