Caffè Florian: The Café That Has Been Open Since 1720

On 29 December 1720, a Venetian named Floriano Francesconi opened a small two-room coffee house under the arcades of Piazza San Marco. He called it Alla Venezia Trionfante — "To Triumphant Venice." The locals, with the affectionate shrug Venetians reserve for grand names, immediately renamed it after the owner: Caffè Florian. It has not closed since.^[1]

Why it mattered

Coffee had reached Venice in the late 1500s through trade with the Ottoman Empire, and by 1720 the city already had dozens of botteghe del caffè. Florian's contribution was social, not technical: it was one of the first cafés in Europe to admit women as customers.^[2] Casanova, who knew the room well, reportedly considered this its most useful feature.

That single decision is part of why the modern café — a public room where anyone with the price of a cup can sit, read, talk, or do nothing — exists. The political salon, the literary magazine launched at a marble table, the idea that an espresso buys you an afternoon of seat real estate: all of it traces back, in part, to rooms like this one.

The regulars

• Casanova — used Florian as a meeting point, partly because of the women clause.
• Lord Byron, Goethe, Charles Dickens — all stopped in during their Italian travels.
• Marcel Proust — wrote sections of his Venetian notes here.
• The Venice Biennale — was conceived around a table at Florian in 1893.^[3]

What hasn't changed

The interior is the 1858 renovation by Lodovico Cadorin: red velvet banquettes, gilded mirrors, hand-painted allegorical panels in each of the six small rooms. The orchestra on the terrace still plays. The coffee — a classic Italian dark-roasted blend — is still pulled in short shots into small porcelain cups. Yes, the espresso at the bar is a fraction of the price of the espresso at an outdoor table; that is also a 300-year-old Venetian tradition.

A unique fact to take with you

During Austria's 19th-century occupation of Venice, the cafés on Piazza San Marco split along political lines: Italian patriots drank at Florian, Austrian officers drank at Quadri directly across the square.^[4] The two cafés are still there, still facing each other, still with their own house orchestras — and on summer evenings the bands take turns, one playing while the other rests. The rivalry is now strictly musical.

References

1. Caffè Florian, "Our History." caffeflorian.com
2. Morris, Jonathan. Coffee: A Global History. Reaktion Books, 2018.
3. La Biennale di Venezia, "History 1893–1944." labiennale.org
4. Norwich, John Julius. A History of Venice. Penguin, 1982.

More iconic cafés

• Café Procope — the Paris café that hosted the Enlightenment
• Café Central — the marble cathedral of Viennese coffee culture