Café Gijón, Madrid

Café Gijón

Best time: Late morning, on the terrace on the Paseo
Getting there: On the Paseo de Recoletos, opposite the National Library; Colón or Banco de España metro

Why it’s in the log

Café Gijón opened on 15 May 1888 on the Paseo de Recoletos, opposite what is now the National Library of Spain. Its modest beginnings didn't last: after the Civil War it became the meeting place of the writers, intellectuals and artists known as the Generation of '36.

Its literary life ran on tertulias — regular gatherings at the same tables, among them a poets' corner led by Gerardo Diego. It drew foreign visitors too, from Truman Capote to Orson Welles and Ava Gardner.

The terrace sits out on the central walkway of the Paseo; the tertulias were held inside.

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Mentioned alongside

Country

Spain

Eleven distinct regions under one flag — the food, the hours and the accent change every few hundred kilometres.

Part of

Literary

The Best Bars and Cafés Where Writers Drank

Eleven rooms with a literary past — Pessoa in bronze outside his Lisbon café, Dylan Thomas's New York bar, Borges in a Buenos Aires basement, and the London pub that invented its Samuel Johnson.