The coffeehouse is a cultural and social institution built around the communal consumption of coffee, originating in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century before spreading to Europe, where seventeenth- and eighteenth-century coffeehouses in cities such as London and Vienna became important venues for political discussion, business dealings, journalism and the exchange of news. Contemporaries in England often referred to coffeehouses as penny universities, reflecting their institutional role as accessible spaces for information and debate open to a wider public than the elite salons of the period, and specific London coffeehouses gave rise to lasting institutions, including Lloyd's of London, which began as a maritime insurance coffeehouse. The modern cafe culture found across much of the world today descends institutionally from this same tradition of coffee-centered public sociability.
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Coffeehouses and salons both served as parallel institutions of the early modern public sphere, informal venues for conversation, debate and the exchange of ideas outside court and church.
The eighteenth-century coffeehouse is frequently cited as a forerunner of the modern think tank, a space where political and economic ideas were debated and refined before publication.
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