Torta Paradiso
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The Torta Paradiso first came into existence in Enrico Vigoni’s pastry shop in the late nineteenth century. The story goes that Vigoni experimented long and hard before finding the recipe and, when an aristocratic lady tasted it, she instinctively exclaimed: “This cake is paradise!”Whether or ...
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The most family-run
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Of the almost 240 historic establishments in the Association, almost 100 have been run by the same family for two or more generations. Here we see those with the longest lineages, in a list of great prestige that pays tribute and honour to the establishments and to the family names that have been so...
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The most “whispering gallery”
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A person opposite the entrance in the left-hand corner of the Sala Cardinali of the Grand Hotel Cocumella in Sant’Agnello di Sorrento, which contains portraits of the four high prelates that Sorrento gave to the Church, can distinctly hear all that is being said in the very opposite corner.
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The most opera
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Since 2000, Pasticceria Gemmi Il Loggiato in Sarzana, in the province of La Spezia, has been hosting an international competition for young opera singers. With big-name sponsors including the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and the City of Sarzana, it discovers and promotes artists under the age of 35...
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The most jazz
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Hotel Universo in Lucca, home of the “Universo Jazz Club”, a cultural creation of Marianna Marcucci, which puts on a highly acclaimed and popular programme of jazz sessions with international stars.
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The warmest in war
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During the Second World War, some members of the Agnelli family, the owners of the Fiat car company, spent the winter at the Hotel Tornabuoni Beacci in Florence and, in great secrecy, had a lorry-load of coal brought to the hotel from the Turin factory.
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The largest majolica façade
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A masterpiece of the Italian Liberty style, made by Luigi Fabris of Bassano, with a record size of eight hundred square metres, the Grande Albergo Ausonia & Hungaria on the Venice Lido has Europe’s largest façade in polychrome majolica. Beautifully restored, it is a miracle that it has surviv...
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The most “original furnishings”
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The first three floors of the Grande Albergo Ausonia & Hungaria on the Venice Lido are adorned with original Liberty-style furniture of 1905, created by master cabinetmaker Eugene Quarti of Milan, who exhibited some items at the Paris Salon of 1907. In every room a bed with headboard, bedside ta...
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Antico Caffè della Pace
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Three exquisite little rooms just by Piazza Navona, with a bar, small tables, banquettes, chairs, statues, pier mirrors and ornaments in a magical mix of Baroque, Empire and Art Nouveau. And tables in the open with a magnificent view of Santa Maria della Pace. Rino Barillari, the paparazzo, recalls ...
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Cafè restaurant bar Excelsior
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A symbol of the dolce vita in the little port adored by international celebrities. With its parasols looking out over the famous square, it is as basic as ever, with Jerusalem-stone floors and cross-vaulted ceilings. Baron de Thierry, a regular with the Colonna, Borghese and Torlonia families, broug...
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Restaurant Al Colombo
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In the early eighteenth century it was the inn “with the sign of the turtledoves”, as Elio Zorzi says in his Osterie veneziane, and the Teatro Vendramin – now Goldoni – has always made it a favourite haunt of actors. Stravinsky, Ezra Pound, the Russian poet Brodsky, and Mastroianni all dined...
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Bar café pastry-shop Grigolon
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A little gem in the Liberty style with antique equipment and containers, most of the furnishings are original, in carved tropical walnut. Even the sign, now restored, is original. A centre of city life, it was the first unofficial headquarters of the Mondovì section of the Club Alpino Italiano and ...
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Restaurant Il Palma
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Once also a hotel and a pioneer of tourism in western Liguria, its cuisine has been a symbol and a favourite of all the great personalities who have stopped off in Alassio: the celebrated Titanic survivor Portalupi used to stay here from the 1960s to the 80s. It was much loved by Primo Levi and by h...
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Grand Hotel Ausonia & Hungaria
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A symbol of the Lido and of its splendours, with a façade entirely decorated in Art-Nouveau Liberty majolica and elegant halls with parquet floors, frescoes and original furniture, it has three floors all with early twentieth-century furnishings in pristine condition. Initially patronised by the hi...
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Grand Hotel Royal
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Between the wars, Francesco Saverio Nitti, prime minister of the Kingdom of Italy, often used to come down with his family and soon became a good friend of the owners. This was a hotel for the aristocracy, who flocked from all over Europe to enjoy grand gala evenings on the terrace high above the se...
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Hotel Minerva
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During their stay at Villa Il Sorito in Sorrento from 1924 to ’32, the writer Maxim Gorky and his friend Vladislav Khodasevich, the greatest Russian poet of the early twentieth century, used to cross the street to the then Pensione Minerva to have a shower each Saturday. It was a favourite of othe...
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Restaurant Al Vedel
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Early nineteenth-century Napoleonic maps of the Duchy of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla showed it as a “pizzicagnolo”, meaning that it made and sold salumi, but in the first census of unified Italy in 1864, it had become an inn. Having also been a grocer’s, a café, a post office and a public t...
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1862 - Bruxaboschi haunt of Risorgimento heroes
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The villagers of San Desiderio, now part of Genoa, were roused by the ideas that the Ruffini brothers and Mazzini formulated in the area between 1830 and 1833, and played a heroic part in the Risorgimento campaigns. They were certainly very much at home in the Trattoria detta del Bruxaboschi.
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