The Light In the Piazza
July - August 2007
An American friend who has lived in Italy for 45 years explained to me what he believes to be one of the simple truths about the Italians. “They have a better quality of life than most people. They all know it, and they don’t want to lose it,” he said. This blanket statement accounts for a lot about Italian culture, especially in the south, so much slower—and slower to change--than the north. What inspired my friend’s comment was the fact that we were sitting in a very pleasant little bar, in the piazza of Ravello, the most beautiful town on the Amalfi coast, which is, arguably, the most beautiful part of Italy, observing the life of the village life pass by--at a very slow pace. Every few minutes, friends of my friend would come up to greet him, and exchange pleasantries and local gossip, or talk politics. The whole scenario was unlike anything that could happen in any part of the United States. We were in a piazza in the Italian Campania. We were among county people whose families were rooted in the village for generations. The mayor of Ravello came over to pay his respects. A group of young men in their early 20s pulled up chairs for a drink. A boy on a donkey passed by. All in the space of an hour. There was a magic to this very civilized interlude. And part of the civility came from the venue: a typical Italian bar—a brilliant institution that is almost unknown outside of Italy.
In his book, La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind, Beppe Severgnini, the columnist for Corriere della Sera, writes that Italy is a country that “has too much style to be hell” but is “too disorderly to be heaven.” Despite Severgnini’s declared disorder--or because of it?—some things run very well up and down the peninsula. The commonplace bar—be it grand or rustic--is one example of how the Italian society is virtually hardwired to perpetuate pleasant living.
“Like an English club, an Italian bar is a place of long lingerings, yet it's also a place for swift passings-through, like a market in China,” Severgnini writes. “It's a place where you can clinch a deal, sort out an evening, start a new working relationship, or end an affair over an espresso. Standing at the bar, usually.”
On occasion, Italians are too close to their traditions to have any perspective on how magnificent they really are. Severgnini, for example, makes only a short side-trip to explore the significance of the bar in La Bella Figura, but takes many pages for a discourse on the importance of piazza.
It is the bar, in my opinion, that is the genius loci--Latin translation: “space with good essence”--of Italian life.
The bar is an extension of the piazza, an alcove off of the larger, open-air drawing rooms which define daily existence, and are the core of all Italian urban planning. If the piazza is the direct descendent of the ancient forum, then the bar could be the dwarfen descendent of the basilica—the multi-purpose building the Romans devised as a place of meeting, commerce, jurisprudence, and shelter from the heat of the sun.
It is in the piazza that the Italian acts out his life; the joy of the performance enhancing the experience of being. The bar is the more intimate, enclosed stage—the theater in the round--with food and drink available to compliment the day’s performance.
“A bar is the true center of an Italian’s universe,” says Nicola Marzovilla, a native of Apulia who, with partners Murray Moss and Franklin Getchell, owns Centovini, a restaurant and bar in New York City. “An Italian doesn’t realize how central the bar really is until he leaves and sees that everywhere else he is missing not only the espresso, but also the barista, the place to meet old friends, make new ones, read the morning paper over a cappuccino, watch a soccer match, or just to have a glass of wine at the end of the night.”
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Among the first things an observant visitor notes in an Italian bar is the leveling effect of the experience. We are all the same before the barista. Bankers stand shoulder-to-shoulder with street sweepers. Orders are placed, saucers and spoons appear. A brief pause. Your cup arrives, landing with a satisfying clink. You stir, you drink, you go. The barista, unlike a Paris barman, will hardly ever try to ignore you, or give a contemptuous stare. Along with the priest, the Carabinieri, the waiter, and the motorino rider, the barista is on the frontline of Italy’s daily pageant.
The first week back in New York after an Italian journey is always full of harsh encounters with acrid espresso, insipid cappuccino, and the soulless environment of the coffee shops of New York, where the professional barista does not exist.
“You have to remember in Italy, the barista is in character all day, playing to his audience, who are also in character,” says Marzovilla. “That doesn’t work outside of Italy. You have people who have been working in these places 20 or 30 years—and people who have been going there for 20 or 30 years.”
Not long ago, I bought a Roman fashion mogul a cappuccino in Manhattan. It came in a large paper cup with a plastic lid covering the top. He became very confused, and tried to stick the wooden coffee stirrer into the little sip hole cut in to the lid. “This is so vulgar,” he said, before giving up.
If 100,000 euro La Cimbiali espresso machines and tons of Illy and Lavazza coffee can be shipped around the globe, why can’t the bar be exported, too?
The answer is, “Context,” according to Gherardo Guarducci and Dimitri Pauli, who own Sant Ambroeus, one of the few bars in New York City to uphold Italian standards. (Pauli’s parents, Hans and Francesca, once owned Sant Ambroeus in Milan.) “The simple beauty of a perfectly drawn espresso is very Italian,” says Guarducci, a native of Florence. “Italians appreciate simplicity. Look at food in Italy. It’s virgin cooking, done simply and done well. The ritual of taking your perfect drink at the bar is lost on most other cultures. The willingness to train baristi in the art of drawing a cup of perfect espresso simply does not exist outside of Italy,” he adds.
At Starbucks Coffee, which has 11,000 outlets worldwide, the Italian-made espresso machines are completely automated, and thus the artisinal aspects of the barista’s craft are factored out of the equation. A Starbucks cappuccino can cost $6, or about 4.70 euros. The average cup is 470 ml., and you can not get your coffee in anything but a paper cup.
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