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[Creeperopolis]

Pasqua Rosée (fl. 1651–1658) was a 17th-century servant who opened the first coffee-house in London and possibly Britain. He was born into the ethnic Greek community of the Republic of Ragusa (now southernmost Croatia). In 1651 he became the servant of Daniel Edwards, an English merchant of the Levant Company who was living in Smyrna (modern İzmir, Turkey) in the Ottoman Empire; Rosée's duties included preparing and serving Edwards's daily coffee.

In late 1651 Edwards returned to London, taking Rosée with him. The number and frequency of friends visiting Edwards to drink coffee with him disrupted his social life, and so he set up Rosée as the proprietor of a coffee-house near the Royal Exchange. As he was not a freeman of the City of London he was not able to trade; accordingly Edwards made his father-in-law's former apprentice, Christopher "Kitt" Bowman—a freeman of the City—join Rosée as a partner. The last known reference to Rosée was in 1658, after which Bowman ran the coffee-house with his wife until his death in 1662. There are stories that Rosée left London as a result of a misdemeanour and that he went to Holland or Germany to sell coffee, although there is no evidence this was the case.

The number of coffee-houses grew rapidly after Rosée opened his outlet. By 1708 there were 500–600 in London and Westminster, and others in provincial cities. The original premises of the coffee-house was destroyed in the 1666 Great Fire of London. On its location is a late nineteenth century building housing—in the twenty-first century—a pub, the Jamaica Wine House; a commemorative plaque is now on the spot, unveiled in 1952—the tercentenary of the founding of Rosée's shop.