In 1733 the Swiss family moved to Florence and sold pastries and sugared donuts from their bozzolari, or pastry shop in Piazza Duomo. In the 1800s they moved to via degli Speziali before finally making it to their current, and permanent home in Florence’s Piazza della Repubblica. Along with Giubbe Rosse and Paszkowski who also share the piazza, Gilli has become an institution in the Renaissance city.
Pastries and sweets at Caffe Gilli in Florence
Gilli is world famous for its incredible artisan made sweets and pastries.
A Swiss clock separates the pastry shop in the front of the store from the restaurant in back, an old world restaurant, known for its seasonal Tuscan dishes and fine wines.
The indoor restaurant at Caffe Gilli
I particularly love the outdoor dining area, shaded from the intense Tuscan sun. This is a glorious place to stop for a coffee or a glass of wine, or the ultimate Florentine cocktail, a Negroni.
Caffe Gilli at night
Over the past century this has been a hangout for artists, musicians and writers, including Hemingway, fabulous footsteps for you to follow in!
Caffe Gilli can boast having the world’s most celebrated authority on the Negroni as its head bartender. Luca Picchi, who literally wrote the book on Count Camillo Negroni and the drink created expressly for him. Negroni Cocktail, An Italian Legend by Luca Picchi.
Luca Picchi in the bar at Caffe Gilli
This beautiful and fascinating book is available on Amazon, either in Italian or in English and in hardback or on Kindle/Kindle app.
If you belong to my Private Member’s Newsletter you will be receiving some fabulous information about Luca, the Negroni and the variations on the drink. If you don’t belong to the newsletter you can join here and bounce me back an email requesting the Negroni info.
For those of you who will be making a first trip to Florence, Piazza della Repubblica and Caffe Gilli are midway (give or take) between the Duomo and Piazza della Signoria in the heart of the historic center of Florence. Gilli is the easiest place to find and you are guaranteed to walk past it several times in one day!
Are you planning a trip to Florence? Get my free Secret Florence pdf to discover my favorite restaurants, shops and cocktail bars, guaranteed to take your trip from great to fantastic! Click HERE
Are you traveling to Rome anytime soon? Do you want to see some fascinating sites, full of ancient history, but far from the tourist crowds? Guess what? Rome is full of amazing places that the tour buses don’t go to. Places you can wander around at leisure, experience ancient Rome without the crowds, and that are right in the heart of the city. Today I want to introduce you to one of these treasures.
Why You Need To Visit The Baths Of Diocletian In Rome
Personally, I find Diocletian fascinating.
Just between you and me I knew exactly nothing about him until I started googling his namesake public baths and pool. Partway down my never ending list of things to do in Rome was an entry for Diocletian’s Baths and I had decided to read up on Diocletian and then visit them on the next trip to the Eternal City.
It seems as though every emperor I research has something quirky or interesting going on…
About Diocletian
Anyway, old Diocletian was a Dalmatian military guy who rose to power towards the end of the Crisis of the Third Century. Said crisis was caused by invasions, civil war, economic depression and the plague. The reign of Diocletian stabilized the empire and ended the crisis.
Diocletian, Emperor of Rome
Diocletian became Emperor in 284. He understood that the empire had become too huge and too far reaching to be successfully governed by just one person, so in 286 he made Maximian his co-emperor. He ran the Eastern Empire himself and had Max take care of the west. It is thought that Diocletian never set foot in Rome.
The empire had had a revolving door of emperors, some only lasting weeks or months, others just a few years. In order to ensure smooth succession for themselves and for future emperors, they created a system whereby two competent, experienced administrators would be in place as “junior emperors”, learning how to run the empire so that when the time came the transition would be seamless. (Greed and power hunger meant this would be short lived, even though it was a brilliant idea)
He reformed and restructured the government, essentially keeping it intact for the next 150 years. It had been on the verge of collapse during his youth. Diocletian was an important emperor.
A Life With Vegetables
All went well until 305 when in poor health Diocletian decided to become the first emperor to abdicate. He moved back to the Dalmatian Coast and retired to a palace in a Croatian town now known as Split, living out the rest of his life growing vegetables. Years after his abdication when his system of co-emperors and junior emperors collapsed and the empire returned to chaos, Rome asked him to come back, be emperor again and fix everything, but he was happy with his tomatoes and cabbages (or whatever vegetables he was growing) and chose to stay in Croatia.
Emperors left their mark on the empire by building structures designed to last the test of time. The third century was to a degree a building wasteland, so it was time for something huge to be built.
Maximian, co-emperor of Rome
And so the Baths of Diocletian, the largest of all the imperial baths in the Roman world, was commissioned. They were actually commissioned by co-emperor Maximian in 298 and completed in 306, by which time neither were still emperor. Maximian named them the Baths of Diocletian. Diocletian himself never saw them, as he didn’t go to Rome.
The Baths of Diocletian are not just huge, they are gargantuan. They take up 130,000 meters (or 32 acres) between the Viminal and Quirinal Hills. They were designed to be public baths/pools for the people living in the Viminal, Quirinal and Esquiline quarters of the city.
Supposedly large enough to accommodate 3000 people at any time, the complex was made up of a cool water pool (frigidarium), and medium temperature pool (tepidarium) and a hot pool (caldarium) as well as a 4000 square meter outdoor pool. There was an open air gym (palaestra) on either side of the pools, as well as libraries and beautiful walkways.
Today the ruins of the baths are still enormous. As you walk through the ruins the size and scope of the project is quite overwhelming. You can almost hear the patter of Roman sandals ambling through the common areas nearly 2 millennia ago. How incredible it must have been for the people of Rome to stroll these giant walkways on their way to the pools, how sensational the beauty must have been!
For two centuries water was supplied to the pools via the Aqua Marcia aqueduct, until the siege of Rome in 537 when Ostrogothic king Vitiges had the water supply cut off.
If the shell of the building and the pools were all there was to see I would recommend you add this stop to your Rome itinerary, but there is more.
Throughout the complex, everywhere you turn there are statues.
Spectacular, awe inspiring statues of Gods and Kings, beasts and beauties. Statues and artifacts that will take your breath away.
Water nymph from a fountain, dating back to the 2nd century
Sometimes I think they just dig up so many treasures in Rome that there is no place to put them. The Baths of Diocletian are as good a place as any to line up endless treasures from antiquity!
Walking through the cloisters looking at them all lined up throughout the inner courtyard was just incredible.
Statues line the cloisters of this inner courtyard at the Baths of Diocletian
Some date back to the 1st century B.C. Plenty are dated to the 1st century A.D.
From Nero’s head to a bust of beautiful Antonia Minor, mother of Emperor Claudius, dated to around 18 A.D, that stands taller than me.
Statue of Antonia Minor, mother of Emperor Claudius, 18 A.D.
Sarcophagi from 160 A.D, water nymphs from 2nd century fountains – there is just so much here to look at!
I actually spent a small amount of time exploring the pools and an enormous amount of time walking around and around all the areas with statues.
And here is what is even more fascinating: once again I had the whole place almost entirely to myself.
My first trip to the Baths of Diocletian was in June of 2018. That day Rome was packed to bursting point and stifling hot. I had initially been going to tackle some items on my list that were close to the Colosseum but the crush of tourist humans in the area forced me to head back out of there as fast as I could.
On the map Diocletian’s Baths didn’t look far so I decided to walk, which wasn’t an entirely brilliant idea on a day so hot and humid. A taxi would have only cost a few euros and buses run right up to the Piazza della Repubblica which abuts parts of the walls.
The entry is beautiful, with trees and a huge fountain, a lovely place to escape the heat, or if not visiting during the middle of summer just a lovely place to sit and enjoy the scenery.
The cost of entry was around 10 euros and was worth every penny. There were other people visiting that afternoon – I wasn’t the only one, but I might as well have been. Everywhere I walked I had a clear, uninterrupted view. I could look at the statues from every angle, I could see it all unimpeded.
Statues line the walls under these cloistered porticos. It was a busy day in Rome, but there was no one here
I think my favorite part was walking round and round the cloistered internal courtyard, cool and shaded from the heat of the day. A few artists were scattered around sketching, but when I look at all the photos and videos I took, I can’t even see them.
This, to me, is part of the incredible magic of Rome. There is so much to see and do, most of which is far from the tourist crush.
Diocletian was said to be the most ardent persecutor of Christians. He killed more of them than any other emperor. I have read that the Baths of Diocletian were built by 10,000 Christians. Whether that number is true or not, suffice to say it was a rough time to be a Christian.
This wasn’t based on theology so much as it was based on continuity, obedience and legitimacy. Emperors presented themselves as semi-divine, almost Gods. The concept of aligning yourself with the “one true God” was a direct challenge to that legitimacy. The current system had worked so well and Romans had successfully worshipped their Gods for 1000 years. Why change?
In the end the Christians got the last laugh. Pope Pius IV commissioned Michelangelo to build a church on the site to commemorate the Christians who died building the baths. Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri was built using the frigidarium and tepidarium structures, and a small cloister was built using part of the natation (outdoor pool). St Mary of the Angels and Martyrs is a must see while in the area.
A second church is also there, San Bernardo alle Terme (St Bernard of the Baths). This one was built in 1598 and is quite remarkable in its own right. Similar to the shape of the Pantheon this church is cylindrical, has a dome and an oculus. There are statues of 8 saints in wall niches, by Camillo Mariani dating to around 1600.
You could spend a fabulous afternoon exploring the Baths and the 2 churches. As with so much of Rome you are away from the crowds while still in the heart of the city.
How to get there:
Take a bus from any direction to the Piazza della Repubblica.
From the Colosseum/Forum area it is an easy walk up the Via Nazionale.
For more fantastic things to see and do in Rome, check out my internationally best-selling book Glam Italia! 101 Fabulous Things To Do In Rome. Discover the most amazing places, hiding in plain sight right under your nose! Almost everything in this book is within a 20 minute walk from the heart of the historic center, and close to where you will be anyway. They get very few tourists, so you can avoid the crowds and enjoy a secret side of this fabulous city!
One of the most fabulous things to do in Rome is to enjoy an early evening aperitivo with a view. My Best Rooftop Bars in Rome pdf tells you where they are, what you see and why you need to add at least one of them to your Rome itinerary! Get your copy of The Best Rooftop Bars In Rome HERE
