Caffè Pedrocchi di Padova, an institution in the city thanks to its three rooms in the colors of the Italian flag. The café without doors of Veneto.
Padova it is famous for being the “city of the nameless saint, of the lawn without grass and of the café without doors“. The first is the basilica of S.Antonio commonly known as Il Santo, the second is Prato della Vallewhich is a very large square and the last one is the Pedrocchi coffee, which was originally open at any time of the day, so much so that it didn't even have doors.
Caffè Pedrocchi is not only one of the historic cafes of Italy, but it is a real institution of the city. Very large and elegant it is composed of dirty 3, one red, one white and one green in honor of the tricolor, recognizable by the color of the walls and the tablecloths of the tables. Nowadays it obviously has doors, but its traditions have not changed, and one of these traditions really wants the Green room to be a room where you can enter and sit at the tables freely to read the newspapers made available for as long as you want without any waiter coming to ask you to order a drink.
This old noble custom it is still kept alive by many people, who in summer take shelter from the heat, or on the contrary in winter take a short break to take advantage of the warm environment, perhaps after having consumed an excellent coffee standing at the counter for the fair amount of 1€.
Padua is a delightful city, often, in my opinion, underestimated. Instead, it is full of picturesque views and small treasures of which we Italians should be proud. The Pedrocchi coffee is one of them, located in full center of the city, precisely in via VIII febbraio 15.
Known in the past as the "Cafe without doors“, Because until 1916 it was open night and day, it was a fundamental meeting point for intellectuals, academics and politicians who were in the city. He was, therefore, one of the literary cafes most famous in Italy, frequented by personalities of the caliber of Stendhal. Personally, being a literature lover, I have a soft spot for these cafes. It seems to me, somehow, to take a journey through time.
The coffee was born in 1831 thanks to Antonio Pedrocchi, who had inherited from his father a coffee shop that was very successful as it was located in a strategic point of the city: the shop was, in fact, located in the historic center, a stone's throw from the University, the Town Hall, the offices etc. His goal was to transform the shop into a elegant and neoclassical café, which became a meeting point and venue for conferences and shows. We can say that it fully achieved its goal, thanks to the Venetian architect Giuseppe Jappelli, as the Pedrocchi coffee is, still today, ainstitution of the city of Padua.
The ground floor of the café consists of three main rooms, dedicated to the tricolor. The central (and largest) room is the Sala Rossa, then there are the Green Room, generally dedicated to those who wanted to read the newspaper without having the obligation to consume (a tradition still in use today), and finally the White Room, famous because it was chosen by Stendhal as the setting for the novel “La Certosa di Parma”. The ground floor is completed by the Ottagona room, originally dedicated to commercial negotiations. The first floor has, instead, ten rooms, each decorated with a different style, such as, for example, Etruscan, Roman, Greek etc.
After a period of decline during the two world wars and several management problems in the following years, today the Pedrocchi coffee has returned to relive and host citizens and tourists. I think it is a must for everyone who is in town!
