Hotel Bernini Palace

Florence became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy In 1865. The Chamber of Deputies was established in Palazzo Vecchio, and the Senate in Palazzo Pitti. In the heart of the medieval Borgo dei Greci, the “Hotel Scudo di Francia”, located in a nineteenth-century building erected on the ancient residence of the Della Pera family, which Dante recalls in a verse from Paradise, established itself, among the deputies, as an informal meeting place, both lounge and bar. At that time, in addition to being renamed the “Columbia Parlamento”, the hotel underwent an important internal restoration, aimed at increasing its splendor and decreeing, almost making it official, the role of an influential political circle, as evidenced by the grandiose fresco celebrating the heroes of the Risorgimento. Although a long time has passed, and Rome ousted Florence as early as 1871 as capital of Italy, at the Bernini Palace, the last name taken on by this historic establishment, the atmosphere remains the same: elegant, gallant, irreproachable.