For the latest information on COVID-19 travel restrictions in Italy. Click here.
Overview
The world’s oldest wine bar
The Antica Enoteca Al Brindisi in Ferrara is the oldest wine bar in the world; the Guinness Book of Records says so. According to historical sources, it was in existence in 1100, visited regularly by the workers building the city’s cathedral. In the 15th century, people came here by boat.
Its original name, Hostaria del Chiuchiolino, derives from the dialect word chiù meaning “drunkard”. Prominent figures such as the writer Torquato Tasso and the artists Titian and Benvenuto Cellini frequented it, while Ludovico Ariosto even mentions it in one of his plays, La Lena.
Copernicus lived in the rooms on the first floor when he was a student at the University of Ferrara. On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the birth of this famous Polish astronomer, Cardinal Wiszinsky and Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) also passed through here.
In this tavern filled with history, you can still sip excellent wines, including little-known local ones, to accompany hearty snacks of cold cuts with typical Ferrara bread, rich dinners of cappellacci with sage butter or the unmissable salama da sugo sausage.
