L'Tavern It is immediately in the collective imagination a place of conviviality, joy, drinking red wine with friends and eating simple, low-cost food. A genuine environment where you can meet, play, laugh, build social relationships and feel good in which has - for this very reason - stimulated the imagination and the artistic and literary imagination of various protagonists of our culture. Between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy, taverns were present in very high numbers in the area and constituted the main meeting point after the square and the church. They were frequented mainly by men in the evening and have maintained this connotation of joy and sociability for centuries. Here everything happened between games, conquests, provocations and brawls and the attraction from various writers and artists was therefore inevitable.
The Latin poets Martial and Juvenal they dedicated various songs to the story and celebration of life in the taverns in imperial Rome, frequented by the people and also by many unsavory types. Marziale in “Il canto dell'osteria” narrates typical scenes of the evenings spent in these meeting places.
Cecco Angiolieri in the 12th century he wrote a sonnet “Three things only I know how to do” in which “women, the tavern and the dice” are listed as favorite elements in his life. In the style of Angiolieri we find the “Drinkers' song”: playful song by medieval era contained in Carmina Burana, poetic texts from the 11th and 12th centuries and a perfect example of an ode to life in the tavern.
“In the taberna when sumus…”: “When we are at the tavern we are not interested in anything else but we dedicate ourselves to the game we are crazy about. What happens at the tavern where gaming is fun is interesting, listen: there are those who play, there are those who drink and there are those who live indecently. And those who die from gambling and even lose their clothes...”. The tavern was a warm, carefree place in which one could feel free and enjoy the pleasures of life in contrast with the difficulties of the outside world and popular songs like this fully convey its essence.
References and scenes that occurred in various taverns abound in the literature. We find them in theDon chisciotte” by Cervantes as places of temporary stops and meetings, in theThe Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer in the "Betrothed" Of Manzoni in which the tavern is an environment full of all social types from honest men to shady types ready to deceive and cheat, in the "Reluctantly" Of Rod as a place to eat and drink with friends, enjoying life without doing anything in a form of idleness very close to negative brutalization. Also Zola in the' "Assomoir” describes the tavern negatively as a source of promiscuity, degradation and desperation. How can we forget then Pinocchio's Red Shrimp Osteria where does the meeting with the Cat and the Fox take place?
Bringing us closer to the present day Umberto Saba in the “Canzoniere” he writes a song – “All'isoletta” – dedicated to his search among the alleys of Trieste for a humble and secluded place in which to feel safe from the world between songs and joking. Italo Calvino in the first chapter of “Spider nest trail” describes the tavern as a place of painful and uncertain entry into the world of adults for the protagonist.
The tavern still continues to exert great fascination in the common imagination today. Modern singers were examples of this Fabrizio De Andrè in the "Old City" And Francesco Guccini in the "Song of the out-of-town taverns”.
Times change and move fast but the need to find oneself in a simple, genuine and non-conformist environment where you can drink and chat in peace, leaving the world outside, remains intact.
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