Caffè dell'Ussero dal 1775, Pisa Travel Guide

Founded on September 1, 1775, in the ground floor of the 15th-century Palazzo Agostini—known as Palazzo Rosso or Palazzo dell'Ussero—this café stands as Italy's third oldest, following Venice's Florian (1720) and Rome's Greco (1760). Originally opened by Count Cosimo Agostini Venerosi della Seta, it embodied Enlightenment ideals, offering an open space for free speech across social classes, genders, and backgrounds. Unlike the private Kaffeehaus in his Corliano estate, it became Pisa's public incubator for literary, artistic, and political cenacles.

From the late 18th to mid-19th century, the café buzzed as a laboratory for illuminist and risorgimento thought. Here, the University Battalion's expedition to Curtatone and Montanara was organized in 1848 during Italy's First War of Independence. It hosted the First Italian Congress of Scientists in 1839, earning names like Caffè dell'Unione and Caffè delle Stanze due to ties with upstairs civic circles. Patrons included Domenico Guerrazzi, Giuseppe Montanelli, Giuseppe Giusti, Giosuè Carducci—who penned a heroicomic poem here—and Giuseppe Mazzini.

Housed in Palazzo Agostini, owned by the patrician Agostini family since 1496, the building features Gothic bifores and trifores with family crests of Agostini, Della Seta, Fantini, and Venerosi. Its red brick facade overlooks the Arno, in the stretch Giacomo Leopardi called Pisa's most beautiful. The café's name derives from French hussars (usseri) who lodged there around 1750 with Grand Duke Francesco I of Lorraine and Maria Teresa d'Austria, spawning a legend of a walled-up hussar ghost rattling chains.

Requisitioned by American forces in 1944 during WWII, it reopened as a café-tobacconist in 1945 under 'Usserino,' briefly relocating before returning in 1959 post-restoration. The rear once hosted Italy's oldest cinema, Lumière (1905), born from café screenings in 1899, now a live music venue. Recent management under Emiliano Ipsaro Passione revives its glory with Italy's oldest distillates, sweets, chocolates, and coffees, plus a book chronicling its story.

Today, amid Pisa's Lungarno charm, it offers bar service with historical ambiance, walls etched with illustrious memories. Open daily from 7 AM (longer on weekends), it's a timeless pause for coffee, culture, and riverside serenity, drawing locals and tourists to savor authentic Tuscan flavors in a living monument.