A story that started with panettoni on the royal banqueting tables of the Savoys, and on that of the hero Garibaldi, later blended into the cheerful hum of conversation among aristocrats and the bourgeoisie. Then came the art of the writer De Marchi in the late nineteenth century, and that of Arturo Toscanini and Ernest Hemingway in the twentieth. In the 1940s, this was the salon of the Milanese industrial aristocracy, with Falck and Melzi d’Eril, Belgiojoso and Visconti, as well as Treccani, as we read in news reports, before it went back to being an enclave for the finest spirits in later decades. After every theatre performance, often in the wee hours.