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 literary
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With the prize of the same name, which has been celebrating Italy’s finest wordsmiths since 1926, the Trattoria Bagutta in Milan is one of the first three restaurants in the world to become home to a literary award of national renown (its illustrious historic siblings are the Prix Goncourt in Pari...
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The most Swiss pastry shops
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Sandri in Perugia and Stoppani in Bari are the last two historical pastry shops still run by the heirs of the over 100 Swiss pastry cooks who came down to Italy in the nineteenth century to seek their fortune and open kitchens and shops that became legends in their own right. Both the owners come fr...
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The most “Dolce Vita”
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Hotel Excelsior in Via Veneto, Rome, a legendary venue in the Sixties from which the paparazzi started out on their sorties to capture the stars of Hollywood and their lovers: encircled by dish flashes, its front entrance was immortalised in countless black-and-white photos in glossy magazines, bear...
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The most vertiginous
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The Bellevue Syrene, Excelsior Vittoria, Imperial Tramontano and Royal hotels in Sorrento, with breathtaking views of the Gulf of Naples.
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The most Habsburg
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Hotel Regina in Vienna, next to the Votive Church which Francesco Giuseppe had built after he escaped an assassination attempt; Hotel Sole Paradiso, in San Candido Innichen, in the province of Bolzano, which has a bust of Francesco Giuseppe in the hall; the Ristorante Museum Stube Bagni Egart in Tö...
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The most scoop-prone
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Grand Hotel Villa d’Este at Cernobbio, in the province of Como, where in 1933 after long and shrewd waiting, press photographer Fedele Toscani (father of Oliviero) managed to capture the romance between Bessie Wallis Warfield, better known as Wallis Simpson, and Edward VIII, who shortly afterwards...
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The most creative
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Caffè Fantoni in Villafranca, Verona, where the owner created something to celebrate every illustrious enterprise. To name but one: “l’Acqua di Fiume” – Fiume (“river”) Water – to honour D’Annunzio.
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The most unpaid
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Bar Jamaica in Milan has a list of illustrious debtors, starting with Mussolini: then editor of Popolo d’Italia, he disappeared one morning in 1922 on his way to Rome, leaving a sad bill to gather dust.
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The most difficult to read
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Caffè Paszkowski (pronounced “Paskovsky”) in Florence, nicknamed “Pazzoschi” by the Florentines, after the rather bizarre (“pazzo”) characters who went there in the early twentieth century.
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The most Napoleonic
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The Antica Locanda Mincio, in Valeggio sul Mincio, in the province of Verona, where Napoleon stayed in 1796 after forcing the Austrians over the river.
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The most Garibaldian
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Bar del Tasso in Bergamo was where scores of young men signed up to join Garibaldi and take part in the adventure of the Thousand; the Antica Osteria del Bai in Genoa gave hospitality to Garibaldi and Bixio for their stirrup cup before they left with the Thousand; the Antica Focacceria S. Francesco ...
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The deepest in legend
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During the Third Reich, Hotel Schloss Labers in Merano was the top-secret headquarters of a special organisation which forged dollar bills for Hitler to cause the collapse of enemy economies. In a wall in Hotel Cocumella, in S. Agnello di Sorrento, legend has it that Claire Jane Clairmont, Shelley...
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The most Gothic
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Caffè Nazionale in Aosta has a splendid circular Gothic hall, the last remnant of the fourteenth-century convent of San Francesco.
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The most archaeological
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Taberna Ulpia in Rome stands on Trajan’s markets, Ristorante Checchino in Rome on Monte Testaccio, built up over the centuries by billions of sherds of Roman amphorae, Ristorante Nettuno in Paestum is in the heart of the archaeological excavations, opposite the temple of Neptune.
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The most copied in the world
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Caffè Florian in Venice, Caffè Greco in Rome, Caffè Cova in Milan: they keep having to defend themselves with a shower of international patents.
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The most vandalised
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Caffè Camparino in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, in Milan, has a record of 87 windows broken by political demonstrators making incursions into the Galleria.
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The largest cafés
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Caffè Pedrocchi in Padua, an authentic historical complex, and Caffè Meletti in Ascoli Piceno, an exquisite building in Piazza del Popolo.
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The smallest
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Caffè Mulassano and Caffè al Bicerin, both in Turin, are the smallest historical cafés in the world.
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