"Tweedland" The Gentlemen's club: March 2012

Wednesday, 28 March 2012

Three café's in Europe ... Florian, Venice / Greco,Rome / New York, Budapest.

European Café's . A unique culture, and daily philosophy of civilization and life ...

Caffè Florian is a coffee house situated in the Procuratie Nuove of Piazza San Marco, Venice. It was established in 1720, and is a contender for the title of the oldest coffee house in continuous operation (Antico Caffè Greco in Rome was established in 1760).

Coffee, which the Venetians first recorded in Turkey in 1585, began to be sold commercially in Venice in 1638, and coffee houses soon sprang up around the city. The Florian opened with two simply furnished rooms on 29 December 1720 as Caffè alla Venezia trionfante (the Café of the Triumphant Venice), but soon became known as Caffè Florian, after its original owner Floriano Francesconi. The elegant surroundings attracted many of the notables of the day including the playwright Carlo Goldoni, Goethe and Casanova, who was no doubt attracted by the fact that Caffè Florian was the only coffee house that allowed women, and later Lord Byron, Marcel Proust, and Charles Dickens were frequent visitors. It was one of the few places where Gasparo Gozzi's early newspaper Gazzetta Veneta could be bought, and became a meeting place for people from different social classes. In the mid-18th century the Florian expanded to four rooms.

Valentino Francesconi, the grandson of Floriano Francesconi, took over the business at the beginning of the 19th century, and passed it on to his son Antonio, but by 1858, the establishment had passed into the hands of Vicenzo Porta, Giovanni Pardelli, and Pietro Baccanello, and was in need of some restoration. Lodovico Cadorin was commissioned to carry out restoration work and redecorate the interiors, but there was public outcry over the expense and because he was tampering with a much loved institution. However the work pressed on, and the interiors of the rooms were redecorated in opulent splendour and rebaptised with the names by which they are still known today.

Café Greco Roma

The Antico Caffè Greco (sometimes simply referred to as Caffè Greco) is a historic landmark café which opened in 1760 on 86, Via dei Condotti in Rome, Italy. It is perhaps the best known and oldest bar in Rome and within Italy only Caffè Florian in Venice (established in 1720) is older.
Historic figures including Stendhal, Goethe, Bertel Thorvaldsen, Mariano Fortuny, Byron, Franz Liszt, Keats, Henrik Ibsen, Hans Christian Andersen, Felix Mendelssohn and María Zambrano have had coffee there. Today it remains a haven for writers, politicians, artists and notable people in Rome.

Café New York Budapest

The Boscolo Budapest Hotel, formerly the New York Palace (Hungarian: New York-palota) is a luxury hotel on the Grand Boulevard of Budapest's Erzsébet körút part, under Erzsébet körút 9-11, in the 7th district of Budapest, Hungary. Built by the New York Life Insurance Company as a local head office, its Café in the ground floor named New York Café (Hungarian: New York kávéház) was a longtime center for Hungarian literature and poetry, almost from its opening on October 23, 1894 to its closure in 2001, to reconstruct it into a luxury hotel, as it is now. The café was also reopened on May 5, 2006 in its original pomp, as was the whole building.

The New York Life Insurance Company assigned architect Alajos Hauszmann, to plan the company's hall building in Budapest. Hauszmann, with Flóris Korb and Kálmán Giergl planned a four story eclectic palace, with a café on its ground floor. The building and the café opened on October 23, 1894. The statues and other ornaments on the front side of the building, as well as the ground floor café's 16 imposing devilish fauns, each one beside the café's sixteen windows, are the works of Károly Senyey.
The building was nationalized during the communist era. After the collapse of socialism, the palace was bought by Italian Boscolo Hotels in February 2001. The building was totally renovated, and reopened on May 5, 2006 as a 107 room luxury hotel, with the Café, also totally renovated, on its ground floor.

Monday, 26 March 2012

Charlottenhof ... Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

Charlottenhof Palace or Charlottenhof Manor (German: Schloss Charlottenhof) is located southwest of Sanssouci Palace in Sanssouci Park at Potsdam, Germany. It is most famous as the summer residence of Crown Prince Frederick William (later King Frederick William IV of Prussia). Today it is maintained by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg.

The park area with its various buildings can be traced back to the 18th century. After it had changed hands several times, King Frederick William III of Prussia bought the land that borders the south of Sanssouci Park and gave it to his son Frederick William and his wife Elisabeth Ludovika for Christmas in 1825.
The Crown Prince charged the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel with the remodeling of an already existing farm house and the project was completed at low cost from 1826 through 1829. In the end, Schinkel, with the help of his student Ludwig Persius, built a small neo-classical palace on the foundations of the old farm house in the image of the old Roman villas.
With designs he created himself the artistically inclined Crown Prince participated in the planning process for the palace and surrounding park. He referred to this summer residence as "Siam", which at the time was considered "the Land of the Free", and to himself jokingly as the "Siam House architect".
Officially the palace and park were named Charlottenhof in honor of Maria Charlotte von Gentzkow who had owned the property from 1790 to 1794

The interior design of the ten rooms is still largely intact. The furniture, for the most part designed by Schinkel himself, is remarkable for its simple and cultivated style.

The palace's most distinctive room is the tent room fashioned after a Roman Caesar's tent. In the tent room both ceiling and walls are decorated with blue and white striped wallpaper and the window treatments and bed tent and coverings continue that design. The room was used as a bedroom for companions and guests.