The largest, the smallest, the most unpaid
Some of the oldest and most celebrated hotels, restaurants, cafés, pastry shops, confectioners’, and grapperie of the Locali Storici d’Italia form a little and curious selection of record-breakers. It is worth reading about them, but even better is to go to these establishments and see them personally.
The most family-run
|
|
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...
Details
The most “whispering gallery”
|
|
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.
Details
The most opera
|
|
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...
Details
The most jazz
|
|
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.
Details
The warmest in war
|
|
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.
Details
The largest majolica façade
|
|
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...
Details
The most “original furnishings”
|
|
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...
Details
The first goliard
|
|
In 1820, there was a famous episode of goliardery at the Caffè dell’Ussero in Pisa, which was described by Ersilio Michel in Maestri e scolari dell’Università di Pisa nel Risorgimento nazionale (Sansoni, 1949). A certain Ricci, a student from Livorno, stood up on a table and read out a witty s...
Details
The most sealed
|
|
Closed in 1979 upon the death of Irma Marescotti, the Liquoreria Pasticceria Marescotti Cavo in Genoa remained sealed, quite literally, for almost thirty years. In 2006, Alessandro Cavo obtained permission from the Marescotti estate to reopen the establishment. When he and the heirs pulled up the sh...
Details
The top top-guests
|
|
These undoubtedly include Goethe, who was a guest in countless historic places during his “Travels in Italy”, D’Annunzio who, with or without Eleonora Duse, left a trail of broken hearts and unpaid bills behind him, and Ernest Hemingway, a faithful patron of so many bars in historical places, ...
Details
Historical city records
|
|
Incredible! In spite of its fast-paced business life, Milan leads the way with 16 historical establishments, followed by the more traditional Venice with 14, Turin with 13, Rome with 12, Florence with 9 and Naples with 8.
Details
The most flooded
|
|
Caffè Lavena in Venice, under the old “procuratie” in Piazza San Marco, literally goes under every time high water hits the city.
Details
The most Fellinian
|
|
Hotel Eden in Rome and its splendid terrace with a breathtaking view of the capital, where Federico Fellini liked to give his most important interviews; Grand Hotel in Rimini, which Fellini adored ever since he was a boy, and where he set the unforgettable scenes of his masterpiece “Amarcord”.
Details
The most pugnacious
|
|
Gran Caffè Gambrinus, Naples: the family struggled for almost 30 years to get back a section which, in 1938, was turned into a bank after a senior Fascist official asked the prefect to close it because the noise downstairs disturbed his wife’s bridge sessions. Alberto Savinio, De Chirico’s brot...
Details
The most journalistic
|
|
Caffè Gilli in Florence, where Prezzolini used to meet the editors of his La Voce literary journal from 1908 to 1916; Caffè Mangini in Genoa, which after the last war became the field office for the editorial staff of Il Secolo XIX and Il Lavoro, with legendary directors like Cavassa and Pertini.&...
Details
The closest to soccer
|
|
In the 1930s, the Ambrosiana-Internazionale team, with Castellazzi, Alemandi, De Manzano, Meazza, Faccio, Levratto, Bitto, Agosteo, Cerasoli, Frione and Serantoni, felt at home in Ristorante Boeucc, in Milan.
Details
The oldest patent royal
|
|
Caffè Pasticceria Stoppani in Bari has Italy’s oldest patents royal as official supplier to the Royal Household. It is issue no. 2, dated 1865. Those who obtained one could not only boast the title, but also place the Savoy crest on their packages and products.
Details
The most cinematographic
|
|
A journey through film curios for cinema lovers. The Excelsior Palace Hotel in Rapallo was the set for some of the first external film shoots with Battesimo di Nave (1914), played and directed by Giano Paolo Rosmino, a historic name in Italian cinema. For the now virtually lost film Vita Futurista, ...
Details
