Le Grand Véfour

Le Grand Véfour features a row of arched windows framed by intricate, gilded woodwork that spills right onto the cobblestones of the Palais-Royal arcades. Inside, mirrors and painted panels reflect the same gold leaf applied when it opened in seventeen eighty-four. Napoleon Bonaparte once walked these floors to play billiards, and the writer Colette lived in an apartment directly above the dining room. It remains one of the few places in Paris where the neoclassical style of the eighteenth century persists unchanged.