A café on Piazza San Marco since 1750
Gran Caffè Lavena occupies a position on Piazza San Marco, beneath the Torre dell'Orologio, and traces its history to 1750. Under Austrian rule it was known first as 'Regina d'Ungheria' and later as 'Orso Coronato', after the crowned bear that served as its sign, while Venetians commonly called it the 'Caffè dei Foresti' for its role as a meeting point for visitors to the city, a name that reflected the piazza's long-standing role as Venice's front door for travellers arriving by sea and land alike. Its position on the piazza made it a natural point of reference for travellers, and it was here that the 'codega', lantern-bearing guides who led visitors through the dark calli at night, along with gondoliers and coachmen from the mainland, gathered to offer their services – an early, informal form of city guide, at a time when Venice's maze of canals and alleys made local knowledge indispensable to any newcomer.
Carlo Lavena and Richard Wagner
In 1860 Carlo Lavena took over management of the café and gave it his name. Under his direction the café became a gathering place for musicians and intellectuals, and its best-documented regular was Richard Wagner, who during his stays in Venice would call in daily between five and six in the evening for a half-hour conversation with Lavena himself. Wagner is said to have used the upper loggia of the café, sometimes with his wife Cosima and father-in-law Franz Liszt, and the table and chairs associated with him have been kept. Other recorded visitors across the following decades included the writers Alberto Moravia and Guido Piovene, and the café remains a point of reference during the Venice Film Festival, when its tables on the piazza draw visitors drawn as much by its history as by its position opposite the Basilica. The survival of Wagner's own table and chairs, rather than a plaque or a portrait alone, gives the café a more direct physical link to its most famous patron than many of Venice's other historic addresses can claim.
An unbroken decorative scheme
The café's interior preserves period mirrors in gilded frames, which multiply the light and the view of the piazza, along with inlaid woodwork and period furnishings. The upper loggia, from where Wagner is said to have watched the life of the square while remaining apart from it, still offers the same vantage point over Piazza San Marco and the mosaics of the Basilica opposite.
Lavena today
Gran Caffè Lavena continues to serve coffee and pastries from the same premises, with seating both inside, among the historic mirrors and woodwork, and outside on the piazza facing the Basilica. Its position among San Marco's small group of historic cafés, alongside Florian and Quadri, and its documented connection to Wagner give it a role in Venice's nineteenth-century musical and literary history distinct from its neighbours.