Gran Café de Paris

The Gran Café de Paris sits at the edge of the Grand Socco with its pale, cream-colored facade and green-painted shutters. Since the nineteen twenties, it has occupied this corner, serving as a perch for intelligence officers, writers, and exiled royalty. Paul Bowles and Tennessee Williams sat at these tables to watch the city shift around them. During the years of the International Zone, people used these booths to trade secrets while the world outside the windows changed its borders and its flags.