Ascoli Piceno. It is said that the composer Pietro Mascagni began writing the opera *Lodoletta* whilst sitting at the tables of Caffè Meletti.
Bassano del Grappa (Vicenza). Grappa takes centre stage in A Farewell to Arms, in which Ernest Hemingway has his characters fortify themselves before battles – whether military or romantic – with copious amounts of drink. The writer discovered it, appreciated its effects and was inspired by the Grapperia Nardini on the famous Ponte degli Alpini, where he would often stop for a small glass, sitting right opposite along the wall, whilst he was stationed at Villa Ca’ Erizzo on the banks of the Brenta, serving as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross during the First World War.
Bergamo. In the second half of the 1920s, the Pasticceria Bar Cavour, in the Upper Town, was one of the historic venues where vernacular poets and men of letters – the architects of the ‘Ducato di Piazza Pontida’ – would gather to compose verse, an institution founded in 1924 to safeguard Bergamo’s cultural traditions, the creator of valuable anthologies of local poetry, and today a cultural association that promotes and disseminates poetry and theatre in the local dialect.
Bologna. The playwright and poet Alfredo Testoni, author of the hugely successful 1905 play Il cardinale Lambertini and a regular at the Panificio Pasticceria Paolo Atti & Figli, dedicated a poem to his friend Paolo Atti in honour of his tortellini, signed by ‘Sgnera Cattareina’ (Mrs Caterina), the famous protagonist of his much-loved humorous sonnets in the Bolognese dialect. The poem is included in the book *Bologna in cucina: ricette di famiglia dal 1880* (Bologna in the Kitchen: Family Recipes since 1880) by Beatrice Spagnoli, in the chapter on ‘Zirudèle bolognesi (1900–2008)’, a collection of poems and sonnets that famous dialect poets of the past and contemporary writers have dedicated to the establishment and the family, who have been at the helm for a century and a half.
Castiglioncello (Livorno). In 1962, the entire cast and crew of the famous film *Il sorpasso* stayed at the Hotel Miramare: here, every morning and every evening, they would discuss, refine and fine-tune the script, the actors’ performances, the pacing and the camera angles before heading to the set.
Chiaramonte Gulfi (Ragusa). The journalist, writer and essayist Giuseppe Fava, who was murdered by the Mafia, left behind in his iconic newspaper I Siciliani a delicate travelogue from the 1980s chronicling his discovery of the ‘king of sausages’, recounting his encounter with Cavaliere La Terra and the delicacies and history of his Trattoria Majore.
Chiavari (Genoa). The poet, journalist and playwright Vito Elio Petrucci, a champion and promoter of the Genoese dialect and culture, loved to spend time at the Osteria Luchin, where he would write and plan his popular television programme on the history of Genoa; in 1987, he dedicated a short poem to the restaurant’s famous “farinata”.
Cogne (Aosta). During the Second World War, the famous pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli took refuge at the Hotel Bellevue, where he continued to hone his touch and interpretative finesse by playing the piano which is still used in the dining room today.
Cortina d’Ampezzo (Belluno). In 1948, Ernest Hemingway stayed at the Hotel de La Poste. He knew Cortina well and loved it because he could write in peace; and he loved the hotel because the barman, Renato, would listen to him for hours. He stayed in room 107, which is now named after him. His wife Mary broke her ankle whilst skiing and spent a lot of time at the hotel; he was always in his room writing and did not want to be disturbed under any circumstances. Except, that is, to spend hours at the bar or rush off to meet Adriana Ivancich. ‘Across the River and Into the Trees’ was taking shape. This was recounted in 2012 by the owner, Marisa Manaigo, during the Hemingway commemoration in Cortina.
Ferrara. The poet and playwright Ludovico Ariosto, author of Orlando Furioso, pays tribute to the Hostaria del Chiuchiolino – now known as Osteria Al Brindisi – by mentioning it in his finest comedy, La Lena (1528), a ‘romantic tale’ with a happy ending set in Ferrara.
Florence. Piazza della Repubblica – formerly Piazza Vittorio Emanuele – with its three famous cafés, has been at the heart of our cultural history for half a century. Amidst the intellectual ferment that animated the renowned Caffè Giubbe Rosse in the early 20th century, two avant-garde magazines were conceived. In 1908, Giuseppe Prezzolini and Giovanni Papini, with advice from Benedetto Croce, launched ‘La Voce’, one of the most important cultural and political magazines of the twentieth century, created to reach all intellectuals and renew the country’s ruling class; it was published until 1916; in its pages, in 1910, Ardengo Soffici wrote his famous scathing review of the first Futurist art exhibition in Milan, provoking a reaction from Marinetti, Boccioni and Carrà, who tracked him down in Florence and assaulted him with a slap whilst he was sitting at the very same Giubbe Rosse in the company of his friend, the sculptor Medardo Rosso, causing pandemonium to break out across the entire square. Having left *La Voce*, Papini and Soffici planned and launched the literary magazine Lacerba in 1913; the magazine initially reconciled itself with Futurism and enthusiastically embraced the movement, only to break away from it controversially a year later. Whenever they wanted to work in peace, the editors of *La Voce* and later those of *Lacerba* would move across the road to Caffè Paszkowski, whilst Prezzolini and his editors would often head to the nearby Caffè Gilli, frequented by more ‘well-behaved’ people. Also at the Giubbe Rosse, in 1938, Alfonso Gatto and Vasco Pratolini launched the magazine Campo di Marte, edited by Enrico Vallecchi and featuring contributions from highly prestigious writers; it ran counter to fascist culture and lasted only a year, having been suspended by the regime’s censors on the eve of the Second World War. The Hotel Monna Lisa in Borgo Pinti was, in the nineteenth century, the elegant mansion where the neoclassical sculptor Giovanni Duprè lived and had his studio: still owned by his descendants today, it is like a fascinating museum.
Gardone (Brescia). At the Grand Hotel Gardone, Nobel Prize winner Paul Heyse wrote two short stories published in 1902 in Novelle dal Lago di Garda (Stories from Lake Garda), both of which are set in the hotel.
Genoa. An entire letter from Giuseppe Verdi to his friend Count Opprandino Arrivabene, dated 6 January 1881, is devoted to the Confetteria Romanengo: ‘Dear Arrivabene, I never for a moment intended to “refute” you. Living amongst these ‘sweet treats’, I had never realised that Romanengo knew how to season every sort of fruit so exquisitely. I was told this by some people in Paris to whom I had sent some of Romanengo’s creations. Having made this discovery, I wanted to share it with you.” Note the Maestro’s slight slip-up, as he uses the term ‘season’ instead of ‘candied’. Many recognise Confetteria Romanengo – which also has a historic branch on the elegant Via Roma – as one of the three mysterious protagonists of the song ‘Parlando del naufragio della London Valour’, from singer-songwriter Fabrizio De Andrè’s 1978 album ‘Rimini’: “The pastry chef from Via Roma is coming down the stairs / every dozen steps he finds a hand to stamp on / he’s got a toy whisk tucked under his tea dress”.
Milan. At Caffè Campari, the predecessor of the Camparino in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, the playwright and patriot Felice Cavallotti penned a few prophetic lines of poetry on 5 March 1898, the day before he died in a duel in Rome; the 27-year-old Umberto Boccioni, struck by a news story, immortalised the café’s entrance in his famous Futurist masterpiece Rissa in Galleria (1910). The Verismo writer Gerolamo Rovetta, a keen observer and psychologist, found the inspiration for the characters in his 1894 novel La baraonda whilst frequenting the Caffè Cova, which was then located next to La Scala Theatre.The contemporary philosopher and writer Franco Bolelli has his second studio at Pasticceria Cucchi and stops by every day to work at a table there; the famous watercolourist Giulio Falzoni, one of the greatest of the twentieth century, used to pop in here every day, often several times a day: for the last twenty years, right up until 1978, he lived on the top floor of the same building and regarded the café as part of his painter’s studio. Bar Jamaica, a legendary cultural hotbed of the 1950s and 1960s, frequented by the intellectuals who gravitated towards the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, with its diverse and ever-bustling clientele, inspired great photographers such as Ugo Mulas, Mario Dondero, Alfa Castaldi, Carlo Orsi, Uliano Lucas and Giancarlo Moroldo, who have left behind extraordinary records of the venue’s regulars. In 1908, at the Ristorante Savini, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti – who lived in Via Senato – during lively and memorable after-dinner gatherings with his circle, which included Cinti, Russolo, Pratella, Buzzi, Boccioni, Carrà, launched ‘Futurist cuisine’ and laid the groundwork for the early battles that led to the publication of the famous ‘Manifesto of Futurism’, which stunned Europe.
Montepulciano (Siena). The playwright and writer Luigi Pirandello enjoyed spending time at the Caffè Poliziano in Montepulciano, where he went on holiday in the very early years of the 20th century, because it was his favourite spot for capturing, from the patrons, that expressiveness of spoken language which he incorporated into his characters’ dialogue. Here he would take notes in one of his famous notebooks, veritable compendia of colloquial expressions and refined idioms.
Naples. In 1885, the renowned journalistic couple Edoardo Scarfoglio and his wife Matilde Serao – who in 1892 would go on to found the daily newspaper *Il Mattino*, a mainstay of Italian journalism – conceived and launched their first newspaper at the Gran Caffè Gambrinus: ‘Il Corriere di Roma’, which was more literary than journalistic in nature and contained articles on literary criticism, short stories and serialised novels, partly the result of collaborations with the men of letters who frequented the famous café in Piazza Plebiscito. In 1892, whilst he was a young editor at the newly founded Neapolitan daily *Il Mattino*, Gabriele D’Annunzio loved to spend time at the Caffè Gambrinus, where the city’s intellectual elite gathered. One day, whilst sitting at a table, he was playfully challenged by his fellow journalist and poet Ferdinando Russo – the author of famous songs – to compose a song in the Neapolitan dialect: the Vate, in the blink of an eye, handed him the lyrics to ‘A Vucchella’, which Russo kept until 1904, when he had them set to music by Maestro Francesco Paolo Tosti; the song became a hit for the Ricordi publishing house and was also recorded by the tenor Caruso. E. A. Mario, born Giovanni Ermete Gaeta, one of the greatest composers of Neapolitan songs and of the patriotic piece ‘Leggenda del Piave’ – which is almost a national anthem – loved to stop off from time to time and write his verses on the veranda of the Ristorante La Bersagliera, in the village of Santa Lucia, overlooking the small harbour of Borgo Marinari, where a plaque commemorates his immortal song ‘Santa Lucia luntana’, dedicated to the tragedy of emigration.
Padova. On 1 July 1845, the first issue of the weekly magazine Caffè Pedrocchi was published; it had been conceived at the tables of the Caffè Pedrocchi by Antonio Berti, Jacopo Crescini and Guglielmo Stefani. It contained a poem by the poet Prati, *In riva all’Adige* (‘On the Banks of the Adige’), and the programme for the week. Amidst rhymes, satirical jibes at the Austrian police and the resulting suspensions of publication, it continued until 1848 and made a major contribution to the preparations for the Paduan uprising against Austria. In 1917, following the defeat at Caporetto, when the Italian Supreme Command and the French and British Commands moved to Padua, the Casino Pedrocchi Society, on the first floor of the Caffè, together with senior officers, welcomed correspondents from the Italian press, who wrote and sent news back to the country from there: among them were illustrious figures such as Antonio Baldini, Luigi Barzini, Arnaldo Fraccaroli and Renato Simoni. In 1962, the poet Corrado Govoni founded ‘Il Sestante letterario’, a bimonthly journal of literature and the arts, at the tables of the Pedrocchi.
Palermo. Richard Wagner completed Parsifal at the Grand Hotel et Des Palmes, where he had been staying with his second wife, Cosima, and their children during the winter of 1881–82. Pierre-Auguste Renoir went to visit him the very day after he had finished writing it; he rushed back the following day and, in a 35-minute sitting, painted the famous portrait of the composer now housed at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, in which Wagner, jokingly, saw himself as looking like ‘a Protestant pastor’.
Pisa. The composer Giacomo Puccini was a friend of the Piegaja family, who owned the Hotel Royal Victoria, and he was a frequent visitor to their home, which was situated in a wing of the hotel: the grandmother of the current owners used to recount that, on one such occasion when she was a little girl, the Maestro took her to the piano and improvised a few notes for her, asking if she liked what he was composing: those notes would go on to become an aria from Madame Butterfly. At the Caffè dell’Ussero, Renato Fucini discovered his poetic streak; Giosuè Carducci, after passing an exam at the Scuola Normale Superiore with distinction, rushed here and improvised a heroic-comic poem: ‘The hero of the epic, whom I sang of a little and recited a little, was a personified Etruscan vase, who entered the Ussero and smashed the cups, the goblets, and such modern trifles’. John Ruskin frequented the place and, in his Diary, left us the only description of the original sign, which depicted a soldier on a rearing horse; it was thrown into the Arno by the crowd when they took their revenge on anything that might remind them of Austro-Hungarian rule.
Rapallo (Genoa). In 1952, the American writer Thornton Wilder, winner of three Pulitzer Prizes, worked on the play The Matchmaker whilst staying at the Excelsior Palace; the play went on to run for 486 performances on Broadway.
Recco (Genoa). On his 1988 album La pianta del tè, the Genoese singer-songwriter Ivano Fossati publicly thanked the Ristorante Ö Vittorio for inspiring him; the American singer-songwriter and pianist Gregory Darling, who now lives in Recco, fell in love with the restaurant and filmed the music video for his biggest hit, “Angel of Mercy” (2006), there, using the piano that still stands in one of the dining rooms, and included a thank-you in his album “Shell”.
Rimini. The Grand Hotel Rimini began to capture the imagination of the film director Federico Fellini when he was still a young boy, watching it from behind the gates: he paid tribute to it by immortalising it in the film Amarcord and visiting it whenever he could.
Rome. The Antico Caffè Greco in Via Condotti: Casanova mentions it in his Memoirs; it inspired Ludwig Passini’s watercolour “German Artists at the Caffè Greco”, dated around 1855, now held at the Kunst-Halle in Hamburg; a plaque commemorates the fact that the exiled writer and playwright Nikolai Gogol wrote most of his 1842 novel “Dead Souls” here; Guttuso immortalised it in his painting “Caffè Greco”, housed at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, in which he depicts the regulars – De Chirico, Apollinaire, Buffalo Bill and Japanese tourists – symbolically united. The writer Manuel Vásquez, inspired by the delicious recipe book of the Ristorante Cecchino dal 1887, has the protagonist of his 2004 book Montalbán Millennio – Pepe Cavalho on the Road to Kabul recall it on page 24. The Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz stayed at the Hotel d’Inghilterra in 1893, as a plaque on the façade commemorates: it was his second visit to the capital and he certainly began to develop the idea that led him, two years later, to write the historical novel Quo Vadis?, set in the Rome of Nero, which earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1905.
Sant’Andrea in Percussina (Florence). The Albergaccio was the home of Nicolò Machiavelli, where he was placed under house arrest by the Medici on charges of conspiracy: it was here, in 1513, that he wrote The Prince, his famous treatise on political theory, which he subsequently dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici in the hope of regaining the post of secretary to the Republic that he had held prior to his exile.
Sirmione (Brescia). In 1930, the English writer Naomi Jacob moved to Sirmione for health reasons and to find inspiration. Mrs Micky, as she was affectionately known, often worked at the Caffè Grande Italia and formed a warm and lasting friendship with the owners’ family, the Pagiaro family, which she recounted in her autobiography “Me. A Chronicle about Other People”.
Sorrento (Naples). The French writer Marguerite Yourcenar wrote much of her 1938 novel Colpo di grazia at the Hotel Bellevue Syrene; a work that struck readers with its ruthlessness and lack of tenderness in depicting the love of a woman who destroys herself for a man incapable of love. In 1876, Wagner decided that he would resume and complete Parsifal whilst staying at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, having been deeply moved by the mysticism he experienced in the church of the Carmelite Convent, which stands near the hotel; on that occasion, after a few meetings, his intellectual rapport with the philosopher and friend Friedrich Nietzsche broke down; Nietzsche, who was staying at a nearby guesthouse, began to accuse Wagner of having succumbed to religious rhetoric. Also at the Excelsior Vittoria, in 1985, whilst staying in the luxurious suite once occupied by the tenor Enrico Caruso, the singer Lucio Dalla composed his masterpiece ‘Caruso’ in one go. James Fenimore Cooper, author of *The Last of the Mohicans*, conceived the short story The Water Witch in the summer of 1829 during a three-month stay at Villa Tasso in the Hotel Imperial Tramontano, in a study with a splendid view of Naples; the American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, known for her masterpiece *Uncle Tom’s Cabin*, found inspiration for the short story Agnese di Sorrento; the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen stayed here for six months in 1881 and completed his bourgeois drama Ghosts here.
Stresa (Verbania). Hemingway stayed at the Grand Hotel Des Iles Borromées at the end of the Great War, when he was very young and convalescing after being wounded at Fossalta di Piave, where he had volunteered as a Red Cross ambulance driver, and then again in 1948: the hotel and the lake captivated him to such an extent that he immortalised them in his masterpiece A Farewell to Arms, part of which was written on the hotel’s terrace. His room, number 106, is now the highly sought-after Hemingway Suite.
Turin. “Ladies and young ladies / with gloveless fingers / choose their pastries. How / they revert to being little girls!” The wealthy and elegant Crepuscular poet Guido Gozzano loved to linger at the Caffè Baratti and Milano in Piazza Castello, and it was here that he composed the rhyming jest “Le golose”, which pokes fun at the childish behaviour of elegant ladies when faced with the pleasure of a sweet treat. Giacomo Casanova specifically mentions the Caffè Ristorante del Cambio in his famous “Memoirs”. Mario Soldati describes it affectionately in the short story “I passi sulla neve” (“Footsteps in the Snow”), published in “Storie di spettri” (“Ghost Stories”) in 1962; he also sets several pages of his 1981 novel “L’incendio” (“The Fire”) at the Cambio. Lalla Romano describes it as “a magical place, especially in winter” in a passage from “Un sogno del nord” (1989). The famous nineteenth-century epigrammatist Antonio Baratta, an eccentric and destitute man, spent his nights sleeping and writing his verses in Turin’s cafés; he loved the Caffè Fiorio and featured it in a witty epigram, dedicated to the death of one of his noble patrons, who spent his days in the café simply ‘digesting’: ‘May the earth be light upon Count Onorio / Whose death, alas! has left a great void / Upon the benches of the Caffè Fiorio’. The comedian Erminio Macario, whenever he was in Turin, was very fond of stopping off at Caffè Mulassano, because from the windows he could watch people passing beneath the arcades of Piazza Castello and draw amusing inspiration for his characters from real life. The troubled writer Cesare Pavese loved to spend time and write at Caffè Platti, where he would also meet with the publisher Giulio Einaudi, with whose publishing house he collaborated for many years. The journalist, philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci, founder of the Italian Communist Party, would, between 1916 and 1920, retreat to his table at Caffè San Carlo every evening after a theatre premiere, where he would write his ‘critical’ piece for Il Grido del Popolo and the Piedmontese newspaper L’Avanti! It was here, in 1919, that he also conceived the idea of founding the socialist cultural journal L’Ordine Nuovo. The journalist and writer Mario Gromo, in a memorable passage from his 1929 Guida sentimentale, captured a beautiful image of the San Carlo as it was when he frequented it assiduously before the bombings of the Second World War.
Trieste is perhaps the Italian city that still best preserves the creative pleasure of stopping off at a café. A charming interior scene at Caffè Tommaseo was painted by the Giulian artist Vittorio Bolaffio, who was a regular there during the early decades of the 20th century; between the two world wars, this was the venue for the brilliant gatherings of the poet Virgilio Giotti and the writers Giani Stuparich and Pierantonio Quarantotti Gambini; in the final years of the last century, it was common to find the writer Fulvio Tomizza working at a table here. When he lived in Barriera Vecchia, from 1910 to 1912, James Joyce would take a few steps and pop into Pasticceria Pirona every day; it was just across the road and served excellent liqueurs and fine wines: this helped him through the troubled period of writing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the manuscript of which ended up in the stove in a moment of despair and was saved by his sister Eileen. It was his friend Alessandro Francini Bruni, editor of the Piccolo Sera, who introduced Alberto Pirona to the Irish writer.
Venice. The French writer Alain Buisine, an expert on the city, In his 1996 work Ciels de Tiepolo, he recounts waking up at the Hotel La Calcina and quotes the poet Henri François Joseph de Régnier, author of L’Altana ou la Vie vénitienne; For thirty years, La Calcina was also a place of residence and inspiration for the French writer, essayist and philosopher Philippe Sollers, author, amongst other works, of La Fête à Venise (1991) and Dictionnaire amoureux de Venise (2004). The free-spirited French writer George Sand – born Amantine Lucile Dupin – in her Lettres d’un voyageur, describes the romantic sunset over the lagoon that she could see from the small balcony of her corner room at the Hotel Danieli – now the highly sought-after room number 10 – where, in 1834, she lived out her tempestuous affair with the aristocratic poet and writer Alfred de Musset. Carlo Goldoni, who had been a regular at the Caffè Florian – nestled within the Procuratie Nuove – since he was a boy, would observe the patrons and follow their multitude of stories, gossip, scandals and tales, drawing characters and satirical notes for his comedies, foremost among them La Bottega del caffè. Gasparo Gozzi used to frequent the Florian to gather news, gossip and controversies, but also to gather opinions for the theatre reviews and critiques he wrote himself and published in his Gazzetta veneta – an example of modern journalism which, between 1760 and 1761, appeared on Wednesdays and Saturdays and was both edited and sold right there at the Florian. At the Gritti Palace, after a stop at the terrace restaurant and a bottle of Valpolicella, Ernest Hemingway would go up one floor and, in his suite, write parts of Across the River and Into the Trees, inspired by his relationship with the noblewoman Adriana Ivancich. In 1980, it was she who revealed to *People* that they had seen each other for the last time on the terrace of the Gritti in 1955, where Hemingway was moved to tears. During the six periods he spent in Venice to rest, from 1858 to 1883, Richard Wagner enjoyed visiting Caffè Lavena in St Mark’s Square with increasing frequency, where he had his own table, both outside and inside. It was here, during his first stay in Venice, in the tranquillity of the upper loggia, that he completed the love duet from the second act of Tristano e Isotta. Later, he also worked on the lengthy and arduous composition of Parsifal on several occasions. Tchaikovsky worked on the orchestration of his ‘Symphony No. 4’ whilst staying at the Hotel Beau Rivage in December 1877 (now the Hotel Londra Palace) and completed the first three movements. He had named the symphony ‘Do Leoni’ (the two lions) in honour of the lion of St Mark and the English rampant lion. A plaque commemorates the great composer, and room 106, which he occupied, is now the ‘Tchaikovsky Suite’. Il poeta vittoriano Robert Browning, celebre per suoi monologhi drammatici capaci di rivelare anche il carattere di chi parla, durante le amate permanenze a Venezia frequentò e ricordò nelle sue opere la vivace osteria del Lido, allora in aperta campagna, antenata dell’Albergo Quattro Fontane. Lo scrittore e critico letterario americano Henry James era innamorato di Venezia e vi sostò più volte: nel 1881, in una pensione sulla Riva degli Schiavoni, oggi Hotel Wildner, tra il chiacchiericcio e il passare delle navi, portò a termine il suo romanzo più noto, “Ritratto di Signora”.
Villafranca (Verona). In 1923, the philosopher Giuseppe Rensi – whose vast body of thought has yet to be fully explored – wrote ‘The Irrational, Work, Love’ whilst sitting at one of the tables at Caffè Fantoni; the café still holds the manuscript.
New York (United States). Igor Stravinsky, who was very fond of women, turned up one evening at the Barbetta Restaurant accompanied by the charming Rita Hayworth and, feeling highly inspired, composed and jotted down a melody on the guest book on the spot. The American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, who in the early 1920s lived in New York’s Greenwich Village – ‘very, very poor, but very, very happy’ – including at the legendary 75½ Bedford Street, the narrowest house in the city, was a regular at Caffè Reggio with her trusty notebook.