| Paris café is not just a place where one comes | | | | across Paris in search for a better place. Picasso was |
| to drink a cup of coffee. In fact, one doesn't actually | | | | the first to choose the place, and he was followed by |
| come there - the word "come" presupposes a | | | | Chagall, Vlamink, Kandinsky, Leger and Gijom Apolliner. |
| short-time action. People drop in at a café to go | | | | There was always hot soup, coal, and warm stoves. |
| on living… The story began at times when Paris | | | | The atmosphere was free and easy, although there |
| was not such a well-appointed city. In 1920th people | | | | were some rules: the ladies were not allowed to take |
| came to a café to warm themselves attracted | | | | their hats off and to smoke. On the other hand, they |
| by warm stoves. They sat there infinitely with a single | | | | were allowed to dance on the tables. |
| cup of coffee and a book, sketchbook and a pencil or | | | | Haim Sutin painted his best works at the cafe (at that |
| in a company of a good friend or a beloved. Little by | | | | time they cost a cup of coffee, nowadays they are |
| little formed small companies of habitués, many | | | | sold for millions of dollars). Modigliani painted portraits of |
| of whom went down in history. Some due to their | | | | all the habitués of La Rotonde. His portraits cost |
| indisputable talents and some due to the fact of their | | | | nothing to friends and hot dinner of a shot of vodka |
| acquaintance with a genius. | | | | for the other visitors of the café. Jean Cocteau |
| French café is organized like a theater. The | | | | distributed poems, making fun of the snobs, which |
| tables are turned towards the street, in summer they | | | | were destined to enter the history… |
| are placed right at the pavement. Each of the Paris | | | | When Paris welcomed "Russian seasons", legendary |
| cafes has its own history and can boast of its own | | | | Dyagilev and Nizhinsky came to La Rotonda to order |
| visitors. But one of them has more reasons to be | | | | music to young composers (Debussy, Prokofiev, |
| proud of its history than the others. This is the | | | | Stravinsky, Milhaud, Satie). Young poets Max Voloshin, |
| legendary La Rotonde, located at Montparnasse, 105. | | | | Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Mayakovsky were |
| Nowadays it is a luxury restaurant, and there's no | | | | also frequent guests of La Rotonde. |
| bitter, hungry and smoky atmosphere of bohemia | | | | In 1903 Gabrielle Chanel sang there folk songs to the |
| there…it was over 90 years ago when this | | | | rapture of the audience. This is at La Rotonde, where |
| café opened its doors to public. Nobody thought | | | | she met her rich sponsor with whom she would live at |
| that it is destined to become one of the most famous | | | | aristocratic Vichi and become a fashion queen, a |
| places in Paris as well as in the whole Europe. | | | | personification of style. |
| At that time anise vodka cost 5 sous, a breakfast - 10 | | | | Between the two wars the café was favoured |
| sous. Low prices attracted the Bohemia. Besides they | | | | by the writers, such as Hemingway, Breton, Fitzgerald. |
| got tired of the Montmartre and started wondering | | | | |