Rome is home to the full range of coffee bars that represent the state of coffee drinking in Italy today: from pre- and post-war bars with old-world interiors and a balance of traditional atmosphere and service blended with modern sourcing practices; to mid- and later-20th century cafes in which going for a coffee is almost more about the experience than the drink; and finally a more recent cadre of specialty coffee establishments with greater attention to bean sourcing and other facets of modern coffee culture.
Historic (1930s-40s) Roman Coffee Bars
Sciascia prides itself on having sourced “artisanal” coffee since 1919, and the café has been housed in its main location in Prati (Via Fabio Massimo 80/a) since 1937. Here is where even the most simple coffee—a caffè espresso—is turned slightly fanciful with Sciascia’s signature dark chocolate “flower” coating the glass. Besides the classic offerings, there are plenty of decadent coffee drinks such as the “Caffè 1919” (espresso, chocolate, and almond cream), Irish coffee, “French coffee” with cognac, affogato with zabaione gelato, and even an affogato-adjacent concoction of cappuccino freddo with a scoop of coffee granita added in. (Seasonally, Sciascia also offers several flavors of granita.) But with such a beautiful old-school interior, Sciascia will impress and revive you even with the most straightforward order. There are also breakfast pastries, and aperitivo later in the day. The other two locations are just north of Prati (Via Sabotino 35) and in the Piazzale delle Provincie 10 (near Tiburtina/Bologna).
Around the corner from the Pantheon, Tazza d’Oro was originally begun in 1944 as a coffee bean roastery; in 1946 the bar was opened as a way to serve the house blends to the public. Today the Tazza d’Oro name and its location draw visitors every day, all day, from all over the world—perhaps even more so in the summer, when the bar’s granita di caffè (which is on the more slushy side of the spectrum compared to more blended, gelato-like granite) hits the spot in Rome’s heat. They also sell blends that you can take home.
Tucked into its namesake piazza between Piazza Navona and the Pantheon, Sant’Eustachio il Caffè is technically the oldest coffee roaster in Rome’s historic center, having occupied the space since 1938. Since 1998, the caffè on offer has been an Arabica blend of organic, fair-trade coffee coming from Slow Food Presidia in South America. Plenty of the more decadent (tall/iced/whipped-cream-topped) coffees are always on the menu, alongside the basics, and there’s granita in the summer too. It is perhaps more charming, compared to Tazza d’Oro, to stay a while here, with the outdoor tables in the Piazza Sant’Eustachio and a lovely view of Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza’s impressive dome, even if it can be just as busy. That table service costs extra too, but you can drink a coffee standing at the bar inside and soak up the classic 1930s decor. Sant’Eustachio is only open until early afternoon (hours vary; see website), so hit it up earlier in the morning if you want to avoid the majority of the crowd. Like at Tazza d’Oro, you can buy Sant’Eustachio coffee to take home—in the form of beans, ground coffee, or capsules.
Mid-Century Coffee
This café on a corner of Largo Argentina continues the tradition of the characteristic Roman bar that offers a house signature “gran caffè” just as Sciascia, Tazza d’Oro, and Sant’Eustachio did before it. In a similar vein, you can find more luxurious coffee drinks that most visitors don’t expect to find in traditional Italian bars: cappuccino freddo, caffè latte freddo (iced latte), and affogato (espresso with a scoop of gelato). Despite the Cafffe’s use of the extra “f” in its name, as if to emphasize the coffee part, Camerino represents the kind of caffè bar in Rome that focuses slightly less on the actual coffee beans than its grand predecessors and more on the everyday, all-day nature of what a bar can be—with less formal table service and substantial food at lunch time (served in the casual tavola-calda/deli-style), it’s a more laid-back way to sit somewhere for a while compared to a super-historic café or restaurant.
Also in the historic center, La Caffetiera is a Naples-born coffee bar that started in the southern city in the early 1980s before opening in Rome in 1991. The name Caffetiera (not caffeteria, a general Italian term for a coffee shop) refers to the beloved Neapolitan coffee maker invented in the 19th century, predating the similar-looking Moka pot, that results in a filtered coffee more or less. This caffè napoletano is particularly revered as a genre, at least among Neapolitans but among a decent number of Italians too, kind of in the same way bagels are obsessed about in New York—they say it’s about the water, which in Naples comes from nearby springs in the Irpinia mountains. Neapolitan coffee also uses a long-roasted blend that has slightly higher caffeine and is more bitter than other Italian coffee.
Coffee at La Caffetiera, as a child of both Naples and the late-twentieth century, is almost more about the experience than anything else. If you opt for a table rather than standing at the bar, your coffee is served in a traditional copper Neapolitan caffettiera—or the cuccumella as Neapolitans say—for you to pour at the table. The benefit of going here especially for breakfast is that there are more Neapolitan pastries to choose from than elsewhere in Rome, and later in the day La Caffetiera pulls out coffee-based (and other) cocktails for aperitivo.
Modern/Third-Wave/Specialty Coffee
Rome is well populated with third-wave/specialty coffee spots these days (as are other cities in Italy, for that matter). Both “third-wave” and “specialty” refer to a coffee experience that revolves around ethically sourced and often single-origin beans, attention to/transparency on the country of sourcing, lighter-roast coffee, occasional latte art, and specific flavor profiles as part of the tasting experience. In Rome, such places have also carved out a new scene with the kind of “all-day café” vibe (modern and/or minimalist looks, internationally inspired pastries and/or sourdough bread agendas, and mostly non-Italian food that maintains a strong focus on top-quality ingredients) that feels almost more Copenhagen or New York than Italy, which can be as refreshing as an iced caffè latte when it suits. Here are some of the best places in Rome that belong to this category:
Faro
Just off Piazza Fiume, this is where Rome’s specialty coffee scene kicked off, giving the neighborhood and eventually devotees from all over Rome and beyond a foundational education in single-origin coffee. Faro essentially announced the shift that was starting to happen in coffee culture, with a growing focus on beans’ origins and sourcing (both in terms of country of origin as well as individual producers) and the belief that knowing about the terroir behind the coffee beans allows the consumer to taste coffee in the same way as we taste wine, with distinctive flavors that do justice to the bean itself as a fresh, highly prized ingredient.
Ever since opening, Faro has used this third-wave philosophy to urge consumers to view drinking coffee as a socio-political act, much like the organic and local food movement did for edible ingredients. Faro roasts their own coffee in-house (as Aliena Coffee Roasters) and serves both Italian espresso drinks and specialty pastries. They also serve sit-down breakfast or lunch; I stick to the breakfast options.
Barnum
Barnum was one of the first specialty coffee places to open in Rome’s historic center, bringing a refreshingly different vibe to the usual tourist-trap scene near Campo de’ Fiori. Nowadays, the line for a table at Barnum is long enough to make the pleasant Via del Pellegrino look a little more busy than it is at heart, and while I won’t say waiting in line is “worth it” (almost no line is), it is at least a fair indicator of the quality rather than over-hype. Instead of waiting for a table you can drink a coffee while standing: just walk up to the counter and order a coffee (from one of the several roasters they have on offer), grab one of Barnum’s specialty croissants along with it, and you’re good to go.
Roscioli Caffè
If you can’t snag one of Rome’s most sought-after bookings at Salumeria Roscioli, you can still fit in a Roscioli experience just a few doors down at Roscioli Caffè. In addition to espresso-based beverages made with arabica beans from Verona’s Torrefazione Giamaica Caffè, Italy’s premier artisanal roaster, Salvo’s team also offers pour-over and siphon coffee. Seating is limited, so if there’s no table you can order a drink at the banco in the front and enjoy pastries and other small snacks—Rome’s maritozzi exist in both sweet and savory versions here.
Casa Manfredi (Teatro)
The second “Teatro” location of Casa Manfredi in Via Conciatori (in Ostiense), designed to be a spacious, theater-like laboratory for their pastry program, has an overall less Italian and more international “coffee house” set-up than its seat on Viale Aventino. The sleek and modern interior has individual and banquette-style seating where you can enjoy drinks made with “1895 by Lavazza,” the line of beans that the powerhouse espresso company created in order to throw their hat into the specialty coffee ring. With blends, single-origin, and micro-batch coffee on offer, Manfredi also is versed in the ideal pairings between pastries and drinks (in the same way one would pair certain wines with certain cheeses) depending on which blend you choose.
Fischio
This tiny kiosk in Piazza degli Eroi has become one of the more interesting places in Rome to drink coffee precisely because coffee isn’t the only thing happening there. Fischio is best known for natural wine, aperitivo, and canned cocktails consumed standing around the piazza, but the coffee program is unusually thoughtful for a place that could easily have phoned it in. Most of the beans are sourced from Rome’s excellent Aliena Coffee Roasters, and the menu covers both properly extracted hot espresso drinks and cold brew that tastes intentional rather than like an afterthought for overheated tourists.
Café Merenda
Part café, part bakery, part contemporary Roman hangout, Café Merenda taps into the current appetite for spaces where coffee is only one piece of the equation. The beans are carefully selected, milk drinks are properly textured, and there’s a strong savory breakfast and lunch offering that keeps people lingering longer than the average Italian bar would traditionally tolerate. The atmosphere feels consciously international but not rootless. Unlike some specialty cafés that seem imported wholesale from Berlin or Copenhagen, Café Merenda still understands that Romans fundamentally want a bar where they can actually relax rather than perform lifestyle branding.
Otaleg Monteverde
At the far end of the counter inside Otaleg in Monteverde Vecchio, beyond Marco Radicioni’s famously idiosyncratic gelato flavors, there’s a genuinely serious coffee program overseen by Gianni Olimpio, one of the most thoughtful coffee makers in Rome. The set-up is modest and easy to miss if your attention gets hijacked by the gelato case, but the coffee here is treated with the same obsessive attention to sourcing, extraction, and balance that defines the rest of the operation. Gianni works with carefully selected beans and approaches espresso with a precision that still feels relatively uncommon in Rome outside dedicated specialty cafés.
Luna
Just uphill from Piazza Barberini, Luna feels like part specialty café, part contemporary Roman design project, with a polished aesthetic that could have easily overwhelmed the substance if the coffee weren’t genuinely good. Thankfully, the program holds up, not least because this is the newer, trendier sibling to long-established Faro. Espresso drinks are carefully prepared with high-quality beans, the milk texturing is consistently on point, and there’s enough attention paid to extraction and balance to make it more than just another pretty breakfast spot for people in expensive sunglasses.
Love
Love is at this point frequented as much for its “specialty croissants” as for its coffee, which plays almost a supporting role to the pastries that go even a step further than modern croissants elsewhere, with weekly specials that involve a wide spectrum of flavored fillings, toppings that look like they’ve been applied with chef tweezers, and usually require a fork and knife. Naturally, any time chocolate gets involved, it has been sourced as sustainably as the coffee. But both the food and drink have created a somewhat cult following, so be warned—on the weekends in particular, there is even a wait list for getting things to-go or even standing at the bar.
