The Antico Caffè Greco (pronounced [anˈtiːko kafˌfɛ ɡˈɡrɛːko]; transl. "Old Greek Café"), sometimes simply referred to as Caffè Greco, was a historic landmark café which opened in 1760 on Via Condotti no. 86 in Rome, Italy. It was the oldest coffehouse in Rome and second oldest in Italy, after Caffè Florian in Venice.
History
It was opened in 1760 by Nicola di Madalena or Della Maddalena, a member of the Greek community in Italy.
Historic figures including Stendhal, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bertel Thorvaldsen, Mariano Fortuny, Lord George Gordon Byron, Georges Bizet, Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, John Keats, Henrik Ibsen, Hans Christian Andersen, Felix Mendelssohn, James Joyce, Gabriele D'Annunzio, François-René de Chateaubriand, Orson Welles, Mark Twain, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Nikolaj Vasil'evič Gogol', Edvard Grieg, Antonio Canova, Harriet Hosmer, Giorgio De Chirico, Guillaume Apollinaire, Charles Baudelaire, Richard Wagner, Carlo Levi, María Zambrano, Lev Tolstoj, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Frederic Chopin, and even Giacomo Casanova have had coffee there. Cyprian Norwid was described as one of the cafe's regulars.
For more than two centuries and a half, the Caffè Greco has remained a haven for writers, politicians, artists and notable people as Georgios Paganelis in Rome. In 2017, the owner of the building (the Israelite Hospital in Rome) asked for a raise of its monthly rent from the current 18,000 to 120,000 Euros. A court ruling determined that it could be closed down but in early 2025, the Ministry of Culture stepped in and offered to work towards a mediated settlement to ensure the survival of the cafe. However, the Caffè Greco permanently closed in October 8 2025, since the owner of the building won the legal dispute.