Paris, Dec. 28 (AP): From next week, one of France’s most iconic institutions — the smoke-filled cafe — will be but a hazy memory.

The extension of France’s smoking ban to bars, discotheques, restaurants, hotels, casinos and cafes on January 1 marks a momentous cultural shift in a country where thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir once held court while clutching cigarettes in Left Bank cafes.

For smokers, this is the most distressing part of a phased smoking ban that began last February in workplaces, schools, airports, hospitals and other “closed and covered” public places like train stations.

But many bartenders and restaurant staffers are looking forward to breathing easier and to clothes that don’t stink of seeped-in odours from the clouds of smoke where they work.

Just about anywhere indoors will be off-limits for smoking, except homes, hotel rooms and sealed smoking chambers at establishments that decide to provide them.

“The French culture associated with smoking is a 20th-century thing, but we won’t forget the experience,” former smoker Lisa Zane, a Chicago-born singer who lives in Paris, said at Le Fumoir (The Smoking Den) restaurant and bar behind the Louvre.