Setting the Stage for Modernity : Cafes, Hotels, Restaurants

A pleasurable journey to assess the impact of cafes, restuarants and hotels on the urban landscape, and their contribution towards modernity. Cafes, restaurants, and hotels are at the core of the impact of modernity. With these places of taste and leisure, new architectural forms were promoted, creating the perfect setting for the public performance and image cultivation of urbanites in the emerging metropolises of the world. At the heart of many urban myths, cafes are celebrated as intangible sacred places where works of art have been produced, revolutions plotted, lives made, and hearts broken. Cafes serve as the background to public display and sociability. The novel reading of the history of the hotel offers new insight into the context of social performance, analysing the development of tourism with its urbanisation of former natural landscapes. Paris heralded the emergence of the restaurant. As a cultural institution it represents the century-old culinary tradition and as such it is an antidote to the accelerated consumption of fast food. By outlining the specific architectural, cultural, and social spaces that helped form the modern metropolis, Franziska Bollerey provides surprising new perspectives in a well-informed tour d'horizon - which is, above all, a true pleasure to read. Text in English and German.