From Caffè Centrale to Paszkowski
Caffè Paszkowski stands on Piazza della Repubblica, one of the venues that emerged from the redevelopment of the square, then Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, during Florence's Risanamento, the clearance and rebuilding of its old market centre carried out in the closing years of the 19th century. It began life under the name Caffè Centrale before the Polish Paszkowski family took it over in 1904, first running it as a Viennese-style beer hall before turning it into a caffè concerto, a café built around live music, a role it has kept ever since. Florentines have long mispronounced the family's Polish name, correctly said "Pashkovski", as "Pascoschi", a distortion that has stuck for more than a century.
A Gathering Place for Writers
Under the Paszkowski family the café became a meeting point not only for Florence's resident Polish community, of which the family were prominent members, but for a wide circle of Italian writers and intellectuals. Giovanni Papini, Gaetano Salvemini, Giuseppe Prezzolini and Ardengo Soffici were regulars, along with Gabriele D'Annunzio, and later Umberto Saba, Eugenio Montale and Vasco Pratolini. The ties ran deeper than shared tables: Karol Paszkowski served as honorary consul of Poland in Florence, and his son Stanislaw, known in Italy as Stanislao, married Giovanni Papini's daughter.
A Liberty-Style Interior
The café's exterior, with its broad glazed frontage and period signage, and its interior, with mirrors, chandeliers, gilded stucco and painted ceilings, place it firmly within the Liberty style, the Italian take on Art Nouveau that shaped many café interiors of the Belle Époque and much of the square's surrounding architecture as well. Much of what visitors see today dates from a 1935 renovation, which gave the room its current furnishings and a series of landscape paintings set into the wood panelling by the artist Aldo Piantini.
A Protected Historic Café
Caffè Paszkowski is listed among Italy's Locali Storici d'Italia, a register of long-established commercial premises recognised for their historic and cultural value, and in 1991 its fixtures and intended use were placed under formal protection by Italy's heritage authority, limiting how the interior and its function as a café can be altered by any future owner.
Paszkowski Today
The café still operates on Piazza della Repubblica, serving coffee, pastries and meals through the day and into the evening, with outdoor seating on the square itself, facing the eclectic-style palaces built around it during the same redevelopment that gave the café its current home. Its café-concert tradition and Liberty-style rooms continue to draw both residents and visitors, and the connection to its literary regulars, from the Voce circle to the later hermetic poets, remains part of how the café presents itself in the centre of Florence.