Cafe Pamplona

Café Pamplona, located at 12 Bow St. beside the intersection of Bow and Arrow Streets near Harvard Square, is an unusual and renowned café. When it opened in 1959 inCambridge, Massachusetts, it was the first café in the Square. The owner, Josefina Yanguas, claimed the café had the first espresso-maker in the city. Down a short flight of exterior stairs, past a patio with tables, customers enter the café's subterranean interior. The once austere decor includes bright yellow lights which make the thickly-plastered walls glow under low ceilings, and a black and white checked floor. Having survived the changes that have taken place since the mid-1980s, it has become a staple of the "Old Square."