Café Florian, St. Mark’s Square in Venice

Café Florian

“In his day, Florian was treated as an equal by the most prominent Venetian nobles.

When he fell ill, people went to visit him as they would have done for a close friend or a person of high standing.


Café Florian Canova, who never forgot the favours he had received from him at the start of his career, showered him with the most attentive and considerate care.

The poor man, in the twilight of his life, suffered terribly from gout.

It was necessary to have a walking frame made to enable him to walk, and shoes that would not hurt his ailing feet.

It was the great artist himself who wished to sculpt the model, from which the walking frame and shoes were later fashioned.

Florian’s leg, modelled on Theseus’s! It is a good heart that complements genius!”
Henry Harvard – Amsterdam and Venice 1876

An evening at Café Florian

Café Florian

“The fairy lights are beginning to come on beneath the arcades of the Procuraties.

We take a seat at Café Florian, in small booths panelled with mirrors and cheerful allegorical figures with half-closed eyes, and inwardly follow the images of the day as they take shape and transform like a dream.

We let fragrant sorbets melt in our mouths, then warm them with an exquisite coffee, the like of which is found nowhere else in Europe.

We smoke Oriental tobacco, and watch as flower-girls in silk dresses—graceful and elegantly dressed—arrive and, without a word, place daffodils or violets on the table.

Meanwhile, the square has filled with people; a dark crowd buzzes and stirs in the shadows streaked with light; street musicians sing or play a concert of violins and harps.

One stands up, and behind the square teeming with moving shadows, at the end of a double row of brightly lit, cheerful shops, one catches sight of St. Mark’s, with its strange oriental vegetation, its bulbs, its thorns, its filigree of statues, and the darkening recesses of its porticoes, beneath the flickering of two or three stray lamps.”
Hippolytus Taine

A Day at the Café Florian

Café Florian

“During the summer, the ladies come and sit on chairs outside the two establishments run by Florian and Suttile to listen to the garrison band, which gives a concert from eight to ten o’clock in the evening.

You find the whole of high society gathered there in small groups.

People move from one to the other; they sit next to whoever they like, for as long as they wish, and chat whilst enjoying ice creams.

[…] At ten o’clock, the atmosphere in the drawing room changes: the orchestra clears away its music stands and returns to the barracks; the ladies gradually take their leave, and the crowd slowly disperses.

[…] It is then that one recognises those lovers of nightlife who seem to detest going to bed; for them, the cafés remain so very open that their doors are left off from Corpus Christi to All Saints’ Day; for them, the waiters take turns keeping watch.

At midnight, people eat and chat; at three o’clock in the morning, they are still chatting; finally, whatever time of night you go down to St. Mark, you’ll find people seated at tables, strollers, ice-cream eaters, chess players, and above all idle loiterers, who do nothing, are never bored, and stay there simply because they enjoy being there.”
Paul de Musset – A Picturesque Journey through Italy, 1855