Les Deux Magots began as a fabric and novelty shop on Rue de Buci in Paris that specialized in silk lingerie. It took its name from a popular play, Les Deux Magots de la Chine, and installed two statues of Chinese figures, magot meaning a stocky figurine from the Far East. The shop moved to 6 Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1873 and in 1884 became a café and liquoriste, keeping the odd name and the statues. On the brink of bankruptcy in 1914, it was bought by Auguste Boulay for 400,000 francs, and his son added glass walls that let in the morning light.

Freezing writers and artists living in unheated garrets made it their office: Sartre and de Beauvoir, Camus, Picasso, Joyce, Brecht, Baldwin, Richard Wright, Hemingway, and Julia Child. Since 1933 it has awarded its own literary prize, the Prix des Deux Magots. Fame brought tourists, and a 2016 study found 60 percent of customers were international visitors, prompting owner Catherine Mathivat and her cousin Jacques Vernot to redesign the café in 2017 to win back Parisians. It now earns about 15 million euros a year and franchises abroad.

• Author Steve Matchett noted it is the first café in the quarter to catch the morning sun.
• Catherine Mathivat, Boulay’s great-great-granddaughter, started working there in 1993 and took over in 2012.
• It appears in Nabokov’s Lolita, Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and the finale of The Good Place.
• JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4 features a tribute café in its fictional Japanese town.
• A Tokyo branch opened in 1989, Riyadh and São Paulo followed in 2023, with Cape Town, Prague, London, and Guangzhou planned.