Le Royal

The building at 50 Grande Rue has been feeding and watering Barbizon for well over a century. Early twentieth-century postcards show it operating as the Épicerie Centrale — the village's main general store, provisioning both residents and the steady stream of painters and visitors who passed through on their way to the forest. The scale of the building, occupying a prominent position mid-street, suggests it was never a modest operation.

At some point in the twentieth century the épicerie became a café, and the café became Le Royal. The PMU licence — the French licensed betting point — came later, cementing its role as the genuine café du village: the place where you come to read the paper, watch the match, argue about something, and stay longer than you intended.

Every village needs a place like this. Le Royal opens at half past seven and closes when the evening is done. It is where Barbizon actually lives, behind the galleries and the museums and the painters' trail markers. If you want to know how the village feels today rather than how it looked in 1860, sit at a table on the terrasse and order something simple.