The debut of the Ussero

The first rent contracts and private letters addressed to the aristocratic Agostini family that mention the presence of a café on the ground floor of their residence in Pisa dates back to the last quarter of the eighteenth century, but the name “Caffè dell’Ussero” first appears officially in a rent contract note dated 1 September 1775. It shows that the establishment was run by Carlo Pellizzoni of Parma. A copy of this document hangs in the premises, and it shows us how Count Cosimo Agostini “cedes two* shops, with shop-rear and room, as public places, on the Lungh’Arno, beneath his residence in the Congregation and Parish of Santa Maria dei Galletti, for use as a café and billiard hall.” The asterisk refers to a note, dated 1799, added to the left-hand margin of an unpublished document, now in the private Agostini Archives, which states that: “of these two premises, at the present moment one contains the billiard hall, which abuts to the west on that of Minetti, and the other is half of the Caffè dell’Ussero, which abuts to the west on said billiard hall.” In 1795, Pellizzoni was succeeded by Giuseppe Chiesi, whose daughter Maddalena sold the business and the licence, upon her father’s death, to the celebrated Pietro Feroci. This new owner was the former manager of the Caffè del Forestiero and of the Ravvivati family’s Caffè del Teatro, which later became the Caffè Teatro Rossi, opposite the Collegio Ricci, now the Faculty of the Arts and Philosophy.In the photo: a planimetry dated 1794, showing the Ussero Café.