Discover Caffè Pedrocchi

Jappelli's building is austere neoclassical on the outside -- a low, colonnaded block with two Doric loggias, deliberately monumental for a coffee house -- and unrestrained on the inside.

The ground floor is arranged as three linked rooms named for the colours of the Italian flag: the White, Red and Green rooms, the last of which was the one where you could sit without buying anything.

The Piano Nobile above is the surprise: a suite of rooms each fitted out in a different historical style, from an Egyptian room with lotus capitals to a Moorish one, executed with a thoroughness that makes the eclecticism read as ambition rather than pastiche.