The Caffe Greco cosmopolitan symbol of the elegant Via Condotti is the oldest café in Rome, opened in the 18th century; in Italy only the Florian in Venice is older. The café’s name may derive from the fact that Nicola della Maddalena the coffeemaker who founded it in 1760 was Greek, but also from the coffee decanted in the Greek or Turkish way, which was originally served different from the Italian-style filtered coffee. From the beginning, the rooms of the Greek Café served as a meeting place for intellectuals.
The café still retains its 19th-century appearance and in the famous Omnibus room hosts a group of scholars and academic devotees of the city of Rome every first Wednesday of the month. The café is famous for the important personalities who have frequented it over the years, such as Massimo D’Azeglio, Luigi di Baviera, Buffalo Bill, Ennio Flaiano, Aldo Palazzeschi, Cesare Pascarella, Richard Wagner, Orson Welles, Edvard Grieg, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and many others.
On a small table in the Caffè Greco Gogol’ wrote much of Anime Morte. The same café was also often visited by Schopenhauer, always carrying a white poodle he called Atma (soul of the world). In the cafeteria he risked being attacked by a group of German painters called the Nazarenes for insulting Germany: for him it was the stupidest nation on Earth, the only superiority he acknowledged was that it could do without religion.
