Caffè Greco Via dei Condotti Rome

A good place to wait

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‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’ always seemed to me rather dodgy advice. After all, every now and then, some errant Roman will do something other Romans would prefer he didn’t.

I thought about this a few days ago, when I read a report of an 80-year-old Roman who, in the small hours of one morning, tried to drive his Mercedes all the way down the Spanish Steps. A hotel night-shift worker saw what happened and filmed it.

Mercedes descending the Spanish Steps

It was a brave attempt at the impossible and very much against the law. So strict are municipal Roman regulations that you may no longer even sit down on the Spanish Steps to finish an ice-cream, as Romans once loved to do, without risking a fine of several hundred Euros. Should you damage one of Rome’s many protected monuments, you may go to jail for a year.

When film of the Mercedes descending the Spanish Steps hit Youtube, a witty Roman mused: ‘Perhaps he was on his way to Caffè Greco ?’

I saw what he meant. If the headlong driver had managed to get all the way down the full flight of the Spanish Steps, he would have landed in the Via dei Condotti , on the doorstep of the oldest coffee house in Rome, the Antico Caffè Greco, or the Old Greek Café.

Caffè Greco The Omnibus Room photo Wikipedia

Caffè Greco was opened in 1760 by a Levantine emigre, Nicola di Madalena, who came from Anatolia, in what is now Turkey. The eight rooms are a startling mixture of red velvet, gilded mirrors, marble-topped tables and objects as odd as Hans Christian Anderson’s sofa. Mementoes of its customers over the centuries are everywhere. Portraits , caricatures , photographs, medallions of artists, writers, composers and poets, from all over Europe, cover the walls. Some, like Byron, in the view of his mistress, were mad, bad and dangerous to know. Others, like Ludwig of Bavaria , were mad about being in Rome which Caffè Greco seemed to sum up in its coffee, conversation and camaraderie. John Keats lived nearby and so did Shelley. Casanova planned, then botched, an assignation in the plush interior of Caffè Greco.

What so appeals to me what that anyone at all might turn up in Caffè Greco and anything might happen. Like all good cafés, it is an open, very public house. Batty monarchs-in-waiting mixed with poets. Goethe enjoyed the place as much as did, a couple of centuries later, Orson Welles and Audrey Hepburn. On a memorable day in 1890, for no reason anyone knew, Wild Bill Hickok and a group of befeathered Red Indians dropped in.

What makes a café special for some loyal customers will ,sooner or later , drive others around the bend. There are moments when Caffè Greco feels a bit much; too crowded, too close, too many bow-tied waiters, the weight of its past presses too closely. But then a great café always makes its own weather and its climate alters over the years.

Indeed, there was a period in the 18^th century, when Caffè Greco was the preferred meeting place for flocks of Germans . Felix Mendelsohn complained that his compatriots with their loud voices, large hats, extravagant beards, stifling pipe tobacco and flea-infested dogs , lorded it over Caffè Greco. Arthur Schopenhauer told his countrymen they belonged - ‘to the most stupid nation on earth’. His audience responded with umbrellas and walking sticks, driving the irascible philosopher into the Via Condotti. Altogether excellent stuff.

Banging on about Caffè Greco’s defects is a custom almost as old as the place itself. Once upon a time, the many smokers got up everyone’s nose; then there were too many Italians , or English poets or stuck-up Frenchmen. Charles Baudelaire rejoiced at how cheap it was. For a few pence, he reported happily, you could afford a slice of bread and a cup of coffee and make the meal last much of the day. Hippolyte Taine thought the coffee good but, by Parisian standards, he reckoned Caffè Greco pretty much third rate. Today, it costs a pretty penny to dine at the Caffè Greco but the espresso is still excellent , if memorably expensive. A drink at the bar costs a lot less than table service by bow-tied waiters.

Like the nearby Spanish Steps, Caffè Greco is protected by government statute . No-one may own the café without keeping its bar open - a most genial decree. Even so, the unthinkable nearly happened a few years ago. It might have closed when the present owners faced a huge hike in its rent, in what is now the priciest street in Rome. Fierce resistance from its admirers killed the plan to close it down. Their statement to the press makes their outrage plain:

“The idea of Caffé Greco disappearing off the face of the Earth, from the memory of Rome residents and tourists who make a point of having a coffee there, is absolutely intolerable.’

Georgio de Chirico, the surrealist panter and another Italian of Greek extraction, just like the founder of Caffè Greco, and a loyal customer , got to the heart of the matter when he said, with the merest smidgeon of exaggeration: ‘Caffè Greco is the place where one can sit and wait for the end of the world’.

Christopher Hope