A la Civette

A la Civette opened its doors in 1716 on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris and has occupied its current address at 157 rue Saint-Honoré, opposite the Comedie-Francaise and a short walk from the Louvre, since 1876. The shop takes its name from the civet cat, whose scent-gland secretion was historically used in perfumery; "civette" became a byword for tobacconist in French after the shop's early years. The site stands on ground where a 13th-century hospice once stood, and the shop's cigars are stored in what the business describes as the former chapel of that medical building.

The shop was acquired in 1996 by Norbert Weisz and has been managed since 2004 by his daughter, Dorothee Spriet Weisz. It sells roughly 300 cigar references, a majority Cuban alongside selections from Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, held in a walk-in humidor, together with around 200 pipe styles and pipe tobacco. Cigar Aficionado reported the shop serving on the order of 400 customers a day as of its 2016 reporting.

Historical clientele documented by trade press across the shop's three centuries include Casanova, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Robespierre and Napoleon III in earlier centuries, and painters Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas in the nineteenth. The shop marked its tercentenary in 2016 with a season of anniversary events and products, and trade and consumer directories continue to list it as an active, open business on rue Saint-Honoré.