Pavillon Dauphine, Paris

Pavillon Dauphine, Paris

While some interwar internationalists proclaimed the value of small private gatherings in rural retreats and country houses far from media intrusion, others emphasised the need for larger, more public conferences in capital cities where debates and resolutions could be readily communicated to the media. The latter usually involved conference dinners in urban restaurants, some of which began to function as international conference centres in their own right. This photograph shows diners from the early 1930s in the Pavillon Dauphine, an art deco restaurant on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne in affluent western Paris, which has been an important conference venue, able to accommodate more than 2,000 delegates, since the 1920s.