Bohemian cafes

Bohemian Cafes Cafes were seen as much more than meeting-places to the Bohemians; they were places where ideas could be explored and shared, where Bohemians could watch the bourgeoisie, and where much of Bohemian identity was formed.
Mention Bohemia to any Frenchman during the mid-ninteenth century and they would think of the cafes that Murger and his friends frequented. Murger made the Cafe Momus famous, and together with his friends, also visited the Chez Dinochau and Brasserie des Martyrs on the Right Bank. Courbet and his followers also frequented places on the Left Bank, such as the Alsatian Brasserie Andler.	Terrace of a Cafe on Montmartre, painted by Vincent Van Gogh in October, 1886, shows a typical cafe where Bohemians would come to share ideas. picture courtesy of vangoghgallery.com

Henry Murger discovered the Cafe Momus, on the Right Bank near the church of Saint-Germaine-l'Auxerrois, in the years preceding 1848. This cafe soon became a popular meeting-place of such important Bohemians as Gustave Courbet and Alexandre Privat d'Anglemont. The Cafe Momus was such an important location for the Bohemians that it was featured in Giacomo Puccini's opera La Boheme.
Another famous café was the Brasserie des Martyrs, a noisy, smoke-filled cafe in the rue des Martyrs. The Brasserie was a cafe for writers and painters like Murger, Baudelaire and Courbet. The Brasserie des Martyrs was famous for providing a genuine Bohemian atmosphere. Together Murger, Courbet and Baudelaire, who had met in the 1840s in cafes like the Momus, represented three styles of Bohemian life. When these different types of Bohemianism came together in the cafes to drink coffee, lively discussion almost always followed.

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