May 17, 2016
551
Although it opened in France, the first literary café in Europe was the endeavor of an Italian man: young Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, from Sicily, opened Le Café Procope in Paris in 1686.
The Procope was located opposite the Comédie Française theater, which had been built only a few years earlier, and soon became one of the centers of the Ville Lumière's political life, as well as a favorite meeting point for intellectuals of the Enlightenment and leading figures of the French Revolution, from Marat to Danton, from Robespierre to Diderot, from D'Alembert to Mirabeau.
Fonte: Italian Ways