An Italian stamp to commemorate an important birthday. The birthday boy is not a person but a coffee. The oldest café in Europe which, at the end of 1720, therefore three hundred years ago, was inaugurated in Venice by Floriano Francesconi. He was called To the triumphant Venice and it was one of many coffee shops of the city of the Doges. But such was the pleasure of sitting at his tables and having a chat with that nice owner that the patrons thought to do him honor by referring to the place only by his name.
“Let's go to Florian's” said the Venetians of the time to make an appointment in that café. And in no time at all To the triumphant Venice became for all the Florian coffee. Then as today, the oldest café in Europe, under the Procuratie Nuove in Piazza San Marco, his name is Florian and so he is known all over the world. For seniority, only the Parisian Procope would compete with him, but today it has become a restaurant.
A difficult month, that of December 2020 just ended, to remember such an important anniversary. So hard that the day of the birthday, December 29, the Café was closed like most of the venues in Venice, especially those in St. Mark's Square. Born as a café for the Venetians, it soon became the best known café and frequented by tourists from all over the world, today the Florian is experiencing the difficulties related to the Covid 19 pandemic. It is useless and expensive to keep it open in a city with few Venetians around and devoid of the many tourists who, for better or for worse, have characterized the life of Venice in particular in recent decades.
Al Florian distinguished customers since its opening
In fact, even the tourists of the past who came to the lagoon have always frequented and preferred the Caffè Florian, mixing with the Venetians of the time. They sat at his tables Lord Byron and Madame de Stael, Chateaubriand and Stendhal, Silvio Pellico and Carlo Goldoni who drew inspiration from Florian to write his comedy La Bottega del Caffè. But also Giacomo Casanova that here was weaving his amorous plots.
An illustrious clientele for an illustrious literary café, perhaps the most prestigious of nineteenth-century Europe. The editorial office of the Gazzetta Veneta by Gasparo Gozzi, the first modern newspaper. And from Florian the patriot Daniele Manin proclaimed the Republic in 1848 after Venice had risen against the Austrians.
That evening in 1893 when the idea of giving life to the Biennale was born
Not only. It was precisely while sitting at a table in the Sala del Senato of the Caffè Florian that, one evening in 1893, the then mayor of Venice Riccardo Selvatico and his friends, artists and intellectuals, had the idea of creating an art exhibition. What subsequently took the name of International Exhibition of Contemporary Art, now known as the Venice Biennale. It was intended to be a tribute to King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy. Since then, art has always been at home in these parts and today the place hosts Temporanea: the possible realities of Caffè Florian. And Unique (an artist with only one work), important events involving internationally renowned artists. Initiatives that propose the Café as a space for research in the field of contemporary art.
Florian was also introduced to the traditional European idea of Café-Concert with an orchestra outdoors that still contributes to entertaining guests in that magical dimension that is universally recognized as the most beautiful living room in the world, Piazza San Marco.
The refined rooms of the Florian witness small great stories
In the twentieth century Ernest Hemingway and Henry James, Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Marquise Casati Stampa, Coco Chanel and Charlie Chaplin sat at the tables of the Florian…. But also Elizabeth II of England, François Mitterand, Clark Gable, Elton John, Michelangelo Antonioni, Martin Scorsese, Omar Sharif, Mel Gibson, Catherine Deneuve… the list of famous guests could still be very long.
Between a glass of Malvasia and a black coffee, a hot chocolate and a cappuccino, a spritz and a glass of prosecco, the Florian have passed, and have been interpreted, three centuries of history and culture. In the background, the refined and precious internal rooms whose windows overlook the colonnade of the Procuratie Nuove and Piazza San Marco. The Senate Room but also the Chinese Room, the Room of the Four Seasons or of Mirrors and that of Illustrious Men, the Liberty Room created in 1920 (the others are earlier) when the wave of Art Nouveau was in great vogue even in Venice.
A postage stamp from the Italian Post Office to commemorate an important birthday
Icon of style and good taste, of the Venetian and Italian style in the world, Caffè Florian is a treasure trove of art and history where chatter and gossip intertwined but also state affairs and situations that have contributed to the realization of great changes.
If they could talk, who knows what the rooms of this historic café could tell us! A very different atmosphere is breathed in these days and a very different atmosphere should have been the background to the birthday number three hundred. Coronavirus has partially canceled this important anniversary. Waiting for better times, theissue of the new stamp, valid for ordinary post in Italy, testifies to this three-century-long history.
(Documents and Images Archive Caffè Florian)
