The Pride of Piazza del Popolo

I’ve been writing a lot about coffee lately—  I fear I’m becoming the Charles Bukowski of espresso bars.  A few months ago, I chronicled the potential closing of Da Capo, my favorite coffee spot in New York. As it turns out,  its demise was averted at the 11th hour. Sadly, not without some fallout:  Minno, the lovingly irascible barista, wound up moving on.

In the end, most stories about coffee are not really about coffee at all. They’re about people and places and experiences that warrant a few minutes to savor.

Nowhere could this be more true than at Canova, the ristorante and caffeteria  that sits on the edge of Piazza del Popolo in Rome. Sant’ Eustachio Il Caffè might have better coffee. Plenty of places have better food. But nothing equals the experience of taking a sidewalk table at the end of Via del Babuino, one of Rome’s most elegant shopping streets, as the sun rises for one more day in the ancient skies of the Eternal City.

At Canova, one sits with the saints that circle the cupola of the church of Santa Maria in Montesanto to watch the neighborhood come gracefully back to life. There is none of the frantic, grab and go of New York mornings. This is Rome, so older men wearing scarves and fedoras sit and read the newspaper, tourists fortify themselves for the day’s itinerary, and taxi drivers, construction workers, fashionistas and the art crowd from nearby Via Margutta all take their coffee and cornetti with the ease you would expect in a city where time is measured in epochs. There is only one thing that could make it better— and it happened to me last week.

I showed up at Canova a little after the morning rush on Wednesday, and only a few of the outdoor spots were taken. The host Marcello, as thin and upright as the Egyptian obelisk at the center of the square behind him, gestured me to a table.  When he approached in his customary three-piece suit, eyeglasses dangling from a string around his neck to give him a touch of the professor , I saw a glimmer of recognition. Before I could speak, he held up his hand as if to say “wait… don’t tell me…”

“Signore…un cappuccino, acqua frizzante, e un cornetto… con marmellata.”

I expected the church bells to start ringing like a Vegas slot machine. Hold on. I think I just leveled up.

Santa Maria in Montesanto

I’ve been visiting Rome for many years now, and I swing by Canova any opportunity I get. But many of our visits have us arriving in the afternoon and flying out the next morning.  I could hardly be considered a regular.

With a three month span between visits and a location that sits smack in the middle of a tourist crossing— where from May to September, the traveling armies of humanity follow their flags like medieval foot soldiers into the fray— it seemed impossible that someone could effortlessly recall my breakfast order.

“I’ve been here for 30 years”, Marcello told me. “It is part of the job”. He seemed unimpressed with his powers of retention, but not unimpressed with the role he plays in the ongoing story of the city. Looking around, from one side of the piazza to the other, he took in the spectacle and opened his arms as if he wanted to embrace it. “After all this time, I know everyone. The important thing is to treat each person correctly”.

As if on cue, Marcello broke off the conversation to welcome an aristocratic Roman couple arriving with their long-haired dachshund. A kiss on each cheek for the man; a kiss on the hand for the lady (can anyone other than an Italian pull that one off?). Biscotti for the dog. I noted that Marcello did not ask for that couple’s order either.

“You know the Ottica store across the street?” he asked me when he returned to my table. Indeed I did. Ottica Spiezia, on the opposite side of Via del Babuino, was the eyeglass shop where Pope Francis had gone to have his lenses replaced shortly after he became pontiff.

“Years ago, the man who ran it had heart surgery. So I would go every morning and evening and help him raise and lower the metal security gate. This is how you get to know all the people— by doing the small things”.

“For a long time,” he continued, “there were two sisters, twins, who would create a presepe (the elaborate Nativity stage-sets that pop up everywhere in Italy during the Christmas season) every year, just over there…” he said, nodding toward the gate of Villa Borghese. “Always I went to help them set up. It was …. emozionante, ” he concluded, visibly moved by his own memory. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the presepe or life in general. Probably both.

After finishing my breakfast at Canova, I walked to the Palazzo Massimo, which houses a sensory-overloading collection of treasures dug up from the various archeological sites across the city: statues of towering, grappling figures; rows of marble busts, each as unique as the face that inspired them;  sarcophagi decorated with such frenzy as to bring a coffin to life. These Greek and Roman artifacts are humanism at its highest. They lift us up with their grandeur and remind us of the glory man is capable of.

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It got me thinking again of Marcello. There is a proud formality about Roman hospitality that sometimes reads as arrogance. I wouldn’t recognize Marcello without his blue suit, worn through winter and summer alike. He might not recognize himself. Rome is not a town for “Hi, my name is Dean and I’ll be your server.”

But pride is different than arrogance, because it holds within it an appreciation—for the importance of one’s work, the beauty of a place, and the inherited wealth of tradition. In Rome, casual familiarity is replaced by quiet confidence, by centuries of simply knowing how things should be done.

“The people from the hotel…” Marcello gestured to the Hotel de Russie, with its lineup of black Alfa Romeos out front, “they have spoken to me so often, wanting me to come there. But why?” he asked. “When I have all this?”

Marcello looked around again, at the gaggle of students who had just found a table, and the Roman couple with their dog, and the dome of the basilica glittering in the sun, and the 3200 year-old obelisk, and the gate to the Villa Borghese. In this place, where Fellini came to take his morning coffee, Marcello was part of history. Rome’s ambassador to the world.

“Thirty years— this is my life. Every morning, it is beautiful.”

If I were a sculptor, I would make a bust of Marcello at Canova. Lined up among emperors, poets and philosophers, he would be right at home. And he would know everyone’s order, before they said a word.

Marcello, Maestro of Canova

The Fountain of the Four Lions, Piazza del Popolo