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L'Autre Café
The 'Other Café' helped move some of the after-dark action north from rue Oberkampf to rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud. It attracts a young mixed crowd of locals, artists and party-goers with its long bar, huge open space, relaxed environment and reasonable prices. A springboard for young artists, the Autre Café organises exhibition openings and film screenings.
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L'Élysée-Montmartre
In the heart of party-hard Pigalle, this old-style music hall hosts indie artists such as the Hush Puppies, Sabotage, Killswitch and Sorel, as well as putting on club nights and DJs. Doors open at .
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La Cigale
Now classed as a historical monument, this music hall dates from 1887 but was redecorated a hundred years later by Philippe Starck. Having welcomed artists from Jean Cocteau to Les Rita Mitsouko, today it prides itself on its avant-garde programme, with rock and jazz concerts from international and French acts.
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La Closerie des Lilas
With a legacy stretching back to Baudelaire, 'the Lilac Enclosure' is where Hemingway wrote much of The Sun Also Rises while he was living around the corner. Brass plaques tell you where he and luminaries such as Picasso, Apollinaire, Man Ray, Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett imbibed. There's a lovely terrace and an upmarket restaurant.
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La Coupole
Since the roaring twenties, this showpiece has set Paris' trends (it heralded both electronica and salsa), and now hosts diverse genres including reggae and funk. Its brasserie, with muraled columns painted by artists including Chagall, is favoured by young, serious French writers drawing inspiration from de Beauvoir, who worked on her novel L'Invitée ( The Guest ) here in 1940.
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La Fourmi
This Pigalle stayer hits the mark with its lively yet unpretentious atmosphere. The decor is hip but not overwhelming, the zinc bar is long and inviting and the people are laid back. The music is mostly rock, quality well-known tunes that get you going while leaving space in the airways for the rise and fall of unbridled conversation.
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La Java
Belleville's Édith Piaf got her first break in this 1922-built dance hall. These days it features live concerts of world music, and DJs spinning salsa beats.
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La Pagode
Set in the fairytale gardens of the mansion of the former proprietor of Bon Marché, this 19th-century Japanese pagoda was converted into a cinema in the 1930s. Its ceiling is held up by scaffolding, with plastic to stop the roof leaking, but the Ministry of Culture has now safeguarded its role as a venue for arthouse and classic films.
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La Palette
One of Henry Miller's former faves, this mirror-lined cafe was also a haunt of Cézanne and Braque, and these days is popular with art dealers.
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Le Balajo
A classic Parisian venue since 1936, this place still pulls in the crowds for a diverse range of offerings - from the ubiquitous salsa to rock, DJs and R & B. It evokes its past during its Sunday musette (accordion gig) from to , which includes old-time tea dancing.
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Le Baron
When it reopened in 2004, the Baron shot to fame as the place where everyone wanted to be but no one could get into. Intimately located in a former brothel with smouldering, luxury-cabaret ambience, it's graced by a continuous trail of St-Germain artists, hip writers and A-list celebrity drop-ins (Bjork, Sophia Coppola).
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Le Bastille
With a lively terrace overlooking place de la Bastille and a sleek interior of dark timber, chocolate banquettes and amber lamps, Le Bastille serves lunch and dinner and at night turns into a happening club. It closes for just one hour each morning from to , before reopening to serve gratifyingly strong coffee.
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Le Batofar
The bateau (boat) is an incongruous and much-loved red-metal tugboat mostly known for its edgy, experimental music policy and electro-oriented live performances. There's a rooftop bar that's great in summer, while the club underneath provides memorable underwater acoustics between its metal walls and portholes.
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Le Cab
Another chic bar-club-restaurant reserved for the bold and the beautiful, the Cab has a modern design interior with circular lounge areas set around a house-and-disco dance floor. You need to be dressed up to get past the door staff, and cashed up to afford the drinks.
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Le Caveau de la Huchette
Count Basie, Memphis Slim and Sacha Distel are among those who've played at this jazz club housed in former medieval cellars (later French Revolution torture chambers). Nowadays Le Caveau focuses on retrospectives, like its swing show featuring Glenn Miller Dixieland and memories of Django Reinhardt, and the Philippe Lucas Jazz Band's homage to Sinatra.
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Le Champo
The Champo, one of the most popular of the many Latin Quarter cinemas, features classics and retrospectives looking at the films of actors and directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Jacques Tati, Alain Resnais, Frank Capra and Woody Allen. There are two salles (halls), one of which has wheelchair access.
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Le Cithéa
This popular and ever-hopping venue picks up the post-drinking crowd from rue Oberkampf. There's a pub-meets-concert hall feel to it, with quality bands playing rock, soul, jazz and funk. Concerts usually run from , with DJs from .
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Le Limonaire
This little wine bar, tucked far away from the big commercial cabarets off rue Bergère, is one of the best places to listen to traditional French chansons (songs). The crowd can be convivial or almost reverential, depending on the night. Singers perform on the small stage nightly. It's free, with cheap food available so be generous when the hat comes around.
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Le Nouveau Casino
This is the very successful bar/club/concert venue annexe of the Café Charbon. The high-tech interior, set off by metal walls, Italian high-gloss finishing and hospital lighting gives the venue a frosty feel that is ruffled by the heat of underground electro-pop beats.
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Le Piano Vache
Just down the hill from the Panthéon, the 'Mean Piano' is a throwback to the 1970s, with some 1980s Goth just to keep on top of things. Very studenty and 'underground' as the films would have us understand the term. Great music (guest DJs) and a good crowd of very mixed ages. Happy hour is from opening to 9pm Monday to Friday.
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Le Progrès
This sunlit, Art Deco-tiled cafe is a favourite with Paris' current 'lost generation' of expat writers, who come for the cheap bistro fare, strong coffee, and pitchers of wine.
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Le Pure Café
This rustic, cherry-red corner cafe is a classic Parisian haunt, which found its way onto the big screen in Before Sunset . The kitchen turns out well-crafted fare (sometimes with a fusion twist), but above all it's an unpretentious place to kick back with a glass of wine.
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Le Quetzal
A 30-something gay male crowd congregates at this house- and dance-spinning bar, which aptly sits opposite rue des Mauvais Garçons ('Bad Boys' Street', named after the brigands who congregated here in 1540). Happy hour stretches from to midnight.
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Le Select
No mention of Montparnasse, once at the centre of Paris' artistic endeavours, would be complete without Le Select. Opened in the mid-20s, it was the first of the area's grande dame cafes to open late into the night and still draws everyone from beer-swigging students to whisky-swilling politicians.
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Le Viaduc Café
Live jazz plays from noon to during Sunday brunch, but this snazzy place wedged into a glassed-in arch of the Viaduc des Arts is a sophisticated spot for a drink any time of the day or night.
