1859 - Fantoni's "Torta della Pace" for the Villafranca Armistice
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In 1859, Commendator Fantoni, the heart and soul of the café of that name, created the “Torta della Pace” to commemorate the armistice signed in Villafranca, which put to an end the 2nd War of Independence.
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1859 - Des Iles Borromées founder attacks Laveno with Bixio
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On 30 May 1859, upon the request of Garibaldi, Giovanni Omarini, one of the five brothers who set up the Hotel Des Iles Borromées in Stresa, took General Bixio and a group of Cacciatori delle Alpi volunteers by boat to the Lombard shores of Lake Maggiore where they led the attack on the fort of Lav...
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1855 - A soldier-cook at the Corona
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Cavour decided to make Piedmont the centre for the unification of Italy and to achieve this he also used his brilliant foreign policy, as in the case of the Crimean expedition in 1855 entrusted to General Lamarmora, whose Bersagliere cook was the owner of the Ristorante Corona in San Sebastiano Curo...
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1850 - Dreams of unification at Caffè Roma
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From 1850, professionals and merchants of the upper middle-classes, who longed for annexation to Italy, used to meet at the then “Caffè Grande Simeoni”, now Caffè Roma in Borgo Valsugana.
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1848 - Mazzini and Cattaneo at the Grand Café al Porto
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The Ristorante Biaggi in Lugano, the forerunner of the Grand Café Al Porto, was where Giuseppe Mazzini met exiled patriots from 1831 through to 1870. In August 1848 he was here with Carlo Cattaneo, after they had escaped from Milan when the Five Days collapsed. Cattaneo chose exile in Castagnola, n...
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1848 - Revolutionaries and conspirators at the Schenardi
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From 1848 and throughout the early 1850s, police reports in Viterbo revealed that Caffè Schenardi was a meeting place for revolutionaries, conspirators, anarchists, and demagogues – but it was also the favourite establishment of the Papal and French troops.
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1848 - The Tommaseo ignites the flame of freedom
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“In 1848, from this Caffè Tommaseo, the centre of the national movement, the flame of zeal for Italian freedom went forth” states the plaque set up to honour this symbol of Trieste by the Italian National Institute for the history of the Risorgimento.
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1848 - Plotting beneath the Offelleria della Meneghina
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Beneath the Antica Offelleria della Meneghina in Vicenza, there is still the (now closed) cellar which the patriotic conspirators entered from a secret trap door behind the bar during the Austrian siege of 1848.
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1848 - Locanda Mincio in the thick of it
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During the battle of Custoza, on 25 July 1848, the Piedmontese withdrew to Valeggio and here they attacked the Austrians again: the Antica Locanda Mincio was at the very heart of the battle.
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1848 - Gilli sends off Curtatone and Montanara volunteers
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On 20 March 1848, Gilli and other shops in Florence gave supplies to the Tuscan volunteers who marched down Via Calzaioli on their way to the battle of Curtatone and Montanara, where they met with the most efficient army in Europe, headed by Radetzky.
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1848 - Radetzky camps out at La Rampina
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Escaping from Milan towards the Quadrilateral in 1848 to flee the riots of the Five Days, General Radetzky and his army set up camp right in front of the courtyard of the Osteria La Rampina.
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1848 - Cova on the barricades
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During the Five Days of Milan, Antonio Cova was put in charge of the barricade set up against the Austrians in front of his Caffè Cova, on the corner of Piazza della Scala. A bullet whistled through the establishment and was lodged for years in a mirror.
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1848 - The "Quarantott" aperitif at the Boeucc
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To recall the fact that the Boeucc was one of the cafés where the Carbonari plotted the 1848 revolt in Milan, its patron created the “Quarantott” [’48] aperitif in the 1940s.
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1848 - Austrian commander in Venice dines at the Antico Martini
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Maybe because it was here that he first met his wife, the Antico Martini was one of the favourite haunts of Count Ferdinand Zichy, the genteel but craven military commander of Venice who was forced by patriotic rebels to flee to Vienna during the Risorgimento uprising of 1848.
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1848 - Florian sofas for the wounded
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During the popular uprisings led by Tommaseo and Manin in March 1848, the Caffè Florian had its first taste of blood when it took in the first demonstrators wounded in St Mark’s Square.
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1848 - Pedrocchi against the Austrians
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On 8 February 1848, in the rooms of the Caffè Pedrocchi in Padua, students and commoners set aside their differences and struck up an alliance to oppose the Austrians in a bloody revolt.
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1848 - Cavour at the Cambio and Bicerin
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In Turin, located right opposite Palazzo Carignano, home to the Subalpine Parliament from 1848 to that of Italy from 1861, all the great names of the Unification of Italy were patrons at Caffè Ristorante del Cambio, which still has the table where Camillo Benso, Count Cavour, the first prime minist...
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1844 - Renzelli sparks Cosenza revolt
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At the Caffè Renzelli in Cosenza, then the “Caffè Gallicchio”, the patriots Domenico Frugiuele and Gianfelice Petrassi decided on 9 March 1844 that the city was ready to rise up against the Bourbons and to proclaim a constitutional government. The revolt was unleashed and led to the ill-starre...
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