story identification - Pub or tavern reached from many time periods

This has been tickling my mind for a while and I'm not sure if it's an actual story, if it's from a series of short stories, or if it's just something I think I remember.

I don't remember a storyline, only the setting. It's a pub or tavern, and I think the interior was more like the medieval era than anything else. It somehow transcended time. There was no explanation, but either the tavern or the tavern keeper (or some force) picked who could come there. Some people might come there multiple times and others might only come once if they weren't well received. People would enter from all different time periods.

On one night a person might go through a door (or find the door, if they knew what it looked like?), go through it, and end up talking with people from the 5th century B.C., from 1492 A.D., and a number of other time periods as well.

This would have been in a collection of short stories, but I don't remember a plot or storyline, which makes me think it might have been a sketch. I know it was something I read, not a movie or something someone told me about.

Does this setting of a tavern with guests from all eras of history ring a bell with anyone?

Answer

It sounds like you've described the World's End Tavern from Sandman. There's a series of six stories in the middle of the Sandman series where a couple from our time take refuge from a storm and end up in the tavern, meeting people and beings from all times and places who have all happened to stumble into it to take refuge from the same storm.

Six of the people they meet in the tavern tell short stories, each forming one of the comics. It meets the description of a collection of short stories, but I suspect you may have remembered if it was a comic.

It appears to be a fairly well known trope - I wonder if you can find the example that you're thinking of on that page. I'm pretty sure that the other example I was thinking of was Honest John's in The Riftwar Cycle, as per the linked trope page.

Comments

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