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4 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026

The oldest pub in Italy

The short answer

Oldest claim

Al Brindisi

Says 1435. No document from that date has been found.

Grade C · Tradition

Oldest proof

Cantina Do Spade

On record from 1448.

Grade A · Documented

By claim, the oldest drinking house in Italy on this list is Al Brindisi in Ferrara, at 1435 — a year the enoteca letters across its own front page and took from a Guinness Book of Records entry that names no document. By record it is Cantina Do Spade in Venice, which claims 1448: Giuseppe Tassini's compilation of Venetian street names cites an innkeeper at the sign of the Spades in that year, and the Venetian cadastre of 1566 lists the osteria delle do spade at San Matteo. The other claims, 1462 and 1465, rest on documents nobody outside the houses has cited.

Italy has more old drinking houses than almost anywhere and fewer datable ones, and the reason is the same in every region: the record that survives is a property record. A Venetian cadastral entry names a landlord and a tenant; a Bolognese engraving names an inn among fifty-nine others; neither was made to say when a house began. The four houses here are all northern, and all four are rooms where the wine comes by the glass rather than by the bottle and the table. Two are Venetian bacari, counters where cicchetti are eaten off the bar; one is a Bolognese osteria with no kitchen at all, where customers carry in bread and mortadella from the shops outside and are asked to leave if they are not drinking; and one is a Ferrarese enoteca beside the cathedral that opens at eleven, takes no bookings at the start of the week and pours straight through the afternoon. The national association Locali Storici d'Italia keeps a register of the country's longest-lived houses, and it is a good place to start and not a dating: it takes the year each member gives it. That is why three of our four Italian claims are graded C, with the earliest document we can actually cite arriving two and a half centuries after the year on the sign. The exception is the house whose sign turned out to be older than its address.

Two bacari, a counter with no kitchen and a Ferrara wine room

Cantina Do Spade and Cantina Do Mori stand a few minutes apart in the lanes behind the Rialto market and are usually written about together, which hides the difference between them. Do Spade is named in the records as an inn: a man called Carle de Zuane kept house at the sign of the Spades, and by 1488 he was gastaldo of the Venetian innkeepers’ confraternity, which met in the church of San Matteo round the corner. Do Mori’s 1462 comes from the food press rather than from the house, and the same writers say it began as a wine cellar supplying convents. Osteria del Sole in Bologna is the purest of the four and the hardest to date. It sells wine and beer and nothing else; a sign at the door asks anyone not drinking to wait outside; the family that holds the licence took it in 1945. Al Brindisi is the newest arrival here and carries the oldest year, 1435, in a lane beside Ferrara’s cathedral that used to be called Via Gorgadello. It signs itself an enoteca with a kitchen, which is the right order: Monday and Tuesday it opens from eleven to four and takes no bookings at all, the rest of the week it runs from eleven to eleven without a break, and the Ferrara daily Estense describes a cellar able to pour six hundred wines by the glass.

What the Venetian archives will and will not date

The Sole claims 1465 on the strength of documents a food historian is said to have found in the Archivio di Stato di Bologna in 1978. We have not seen them and no source outside the osteria cites them, so the year stays a claim. What can be followed is later and better: Giuseppe Maria Mitelli’s printed game of Bologna’s fifty-nine osterie, of 1712, lists a Sole, and the pub’s present sign is copied from that engraving. That is the shape of the Italian problem in one example — a house with a real history, a plausible year and a first citable document two and a half centuries afterwards. The Venetian records are kinder because the city taxed property obsessively, which is why the 1566 cadastre can put an osteria, a landlord and a tenant at one address, and why the calle, the sottoportego and the bridge outside Do Spade all still carry its sign.

Where Italy sits in the wider list

Four houses is thin for a country of osterie, and the gap is ours: Piedmont, Tuscany, Rome and the whole south are unworked here, and two leads of 1288 and 1407 — the Locanda del Cerriglio in Naples and the Antica Locanda Mincio at Borghetto — are still waiting on the same question about what their counters will serve without a meal ordered. For the nearest comparison — a wine country whose old rooms are also bodegas and tabernas — see the oldest pubs in Spain. For how a claim is weighed against a record on this site, read the methodology, and the full international ranking is at the top 100 oldest pubs.

Map of 4 old pubs in Italy

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The contenders, oldest claim first

Order the contenders

  1. Al Brindisi

    Grade C

    Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna

    The 1435 is lettered across the enoteca's own front page — "Enoteca al 'Brindisi' già Hostaria del Chiucchiolino, a.d.1435" — and its origin is a Guinness Book of Records entry, which the house reprints on the page where it collects its press: from the 1984 edition to the 2002 one Guinness called this the oldest osteria in the world and said the first written record of it dates from 1435, when the osteria was

    Claims 1435; no early record found.

  2. Cantina Do Spade

    Grade A

    Venice, Veneto

    The 1448 is the house's own, lettered across its site as "dal 1448", and its history page attributes the year to Giuseppe Tassini's Curiosità veneziane of 1872, which cites Carle de Zuane, hosto all'insegna delle Spade. The citation is reported independently by Italian writers on Venetian food and topography, who add that the same man was gastaldo of the confraternity of innkeepers that met at San Matteo di Rialto

    Claims 1448; first recorded 1448.

  3. Cantina Do Mori

    Grade C

    Venice, Veneto

    The 1462 date is one the Italian food press uses rather than one we can show the bacaro making: Caterina Vianello gave it in her review for Dissapore in October 2019, under a headline that hedges — the oldest bacaro, so it seems — and Paesi del Gusto repeated it in July 2025. We found no document behind it, and no page published by the business itself; the bar has no website we could trace. Both accounts also say

    Dated 1462 in the press; no early record found.

  4. Osteria del Sole

    Grade C

    Bologna, Emilia-Romagna

    The osteria dates itself to 1465 and says the earliest documents naming it were found in the Archivio di Stato in Bologna by the food historian Alessandro Molinari Pradelli in 1978, among them a plan of the premises. We have not seen those documents, and no source outside the osteria cites them, so the year stays a claim rather than a record. What can be followed is later: Giuseppe Maria Mitelli's printed game of

    Claims 1465; first recorded 1712.

The photographs above are other people's work, used under open licences. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits. A pub with no licensed photograph shows an illustrated façade instead.

Common questions

Which is the oldest bar in Italy?
It depends which question you are asking. Al Brindisi in Ferrara prints the oldest year, 1435, and nothing documents it. On the evidence we can cite the answer is Cantina Do Spade in Venice: Tassini's Curiosità veneziane of 1872 names an innkeeper at the sign of the Spades in 1448, the same year the bacaro claims, and the Venetian cadastre of 1566 lists the osteria at San Matteo. No house here has an older record we can read.
Is Al Brindisi in Ferrara the world's oldest wine bar?
Guinness said so from 1984 to 2002, when the Book of Records carried it as the oldest osteria in the world and dated the first written record of it to 1435 without saying what that record was. Nobody since has named one. A Ferrarese history of the house attributes the year to the city's statutes of 1435 against watering wine, which regulate a trade rather than a doorway, and the earliest dated text that names the spot is Ariosto's comedy La Lena, performed in 1528, in which characters come home drunk from the Gorgadello — the rainwater channel beside the cathedral that gave the lane its old name. We grade the 1435 C and print it as a claim.
What is a bacaro?
A Venetian wine counter. You order an ombra, a small glass, eat cicchetti from the bar and stand. We record a bacaro as a tavern, because the site's categories describe the kind of house rather than the local word for it, and the word stays where a reader meets it, in the writing.
Why is the Locanda del Cerriglio in Naples not here?
Because of the question this site asks first. It was the most famous tavern in Naples — Caravaggio was attacked outside it in 1609 — and Locali Storici d'Italia dates it 1288, a year the locanda's own history page does not use: that page says only that the house is said to have been known from the end of the 1300s. Its published hours are seven in the evening to half past eleven, which are a kitchen's, and nothing traced says whether a drink is served there without a meal. It stays a lead rather than an entry.
Why is Cantina Do Mori out of the ranking if it claims 1462?
Because the year dates the wrong trade. The Italian food press that supplies the 1462 also reports that the premises began as a wine cellar supplying nearby convents, with counter trade arriving in the twentieth century. It keeps its page and its pin; it is out of the Top 100, which ranks continuous drink-led use.