The Café de Paris was a famous bar on

Via Veneto Via Vittorio Veneto (), colloquially called Via Veneto, is one of the most famous, elegant, and expensive streets of Rome, Italy. The street is named after the Battle of Vittorio Veneto (1918), a decisive Italian victory of World War I. Federico F ...

, one of the best known and most expensive streets in

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

, Italy. It was located at No. 90, close to the United States Embassy."Battle of the Beach"
''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

''. October 19, 1959. The bar was immortalised in 1960 in the movie ''

La Dolce Vita ''La Dolce Vita'' (; Italian for 'the sweet life' or 'the good life'Kezich, 203) is a 1960 satirical comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini and written by Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi. The film stars M ...

'' by Italian filmmaker

Federico Fellini Federico Fellini (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He is known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and ...

, starring Anita Ekberg,

Anouk Aimée Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus (; 27 April 1932 2024), known professionally as Anouk Aimée () or Anouk, was a French film actress who appeared in 70 films from 1947 until 2019. Having begun her film career at age 14, she studied acting and ...

and

Marcello Mastroianni Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni (26 September 1924Come da lui stesso dichiarato a 1'10" dquesta intervista/ref> – 19 December 1996) was an Italian actor. He is generally regarded as one of Italy's most iconic male performers of the 20t ...

who played a " paparazzo" riding his

Vespa Vespa () is an Italian brand of scooters and mopeds manufactured by Piaggio. The name means wasp in Italian. The Vespa has evolved from a single model motor scooter manufactured in 1946 by Piaggio & Co. S.p.A. of Pontedera, Italy, to a ...

in search of celebrities."Memoirs shed new light on La Dolce Vita era of drugs, sex and debauchery"
''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. In 1993 it was acquired by Guardian Media Group Limited, and operated as a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' ...

''. February 7, 2010. During the heady days in the 1960s, the café was one of the preferred watering holes of starlets, residual nobility,

nouveau riche ; ), new rich, or new money (in contrast to old money; ) is a social class of the rich whose wealth has been acquired within their own generation, rather than by familial inheritance. These people previously had belonged to a lower social cla ...

, and sultans."Drink to Mafia's bad health at Rome's Dolce Vita cafe"
, Reuters, December 19, 2011

Incidents

On 16 September 1985,

grenade A grenade is a small explosive weapon typically thrown by hand (also called hand grenade), but can also refer to a Shell (projectile), shell (explosive projectile) shot from the muzzle of a rifle (as a rifle grenade) or a grenade launcher. A mod ...

s were thrown at the outdoor tables outside the bar, wounding 38 people. The Lebanese-born Palestinian, Ahmed Hossein Abu Sereya, was arrested and charged with the attack. Sereya, identified as a member of the

Abu Nidal Organization The Abu Nidal Organization (ANO; ), officially Fatah – Revolutionary Council ( ), was a Palestinian militant group founded by Abu Nidal in 1974. It broke away from Fatah, a faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization, following t ...

, was sentenced to 17 years in prison in 1987. In 2008, the Italian anti-fraud police announced that the bar had been taken over by

'Ndrangheta The 'Ndrangheta (, , ) is a mafia-type organized crime, criminal syndicate originating from the Calabria region of Italy. Gratteri & Nicaso, ''Fratelli di Sangue'', pp. 65–68 This body, also referred to as the Commission in reference to the ...

crime families from

Calabria Calabria is a Regions of Italy, region in Southern Italy. It is a peninsula bordered by the region Basilicata to the north, the Ionian Sea to the east, the Strait of Messina to the southwest, which separates it from Sicily, and the Tyrrhenian S ...

. The bar was in the hands of the Alvaro 'Ndrangheta clan. Antimafia judges from Reggio Calabria seized the premises in July 2009. The bar re-opened in November 2011 and was managed by the National Agency for the Administration and Allocation of Confiscated Properties (''Agenzia nazionale per l'amministrazione e la destinazione dei beni confiscati''). It sold products produced by one of Italy's leading anti-Mafia groups Libera, which ran cooperative farms on lands confiscated from

the Mafia "Mafia", as an informal or general term, is often used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original Mafia in Sicily, to the Italian-American Mafia, or to other organized crime groups from Italy. The central ...

and other

Italian organized crime Criminal organizations have been prevalent in Italy, especially in the southern part of the country, for centuries and have affected the social and economic life of many Italian regions. There are major native mafia-like organizations that are ...

groups. "The new administrators wanted the cafe to offer products that are not only good but just", said Father Luigi Ciotti the president of Libera."Café de Paris, nuova vita anti-mafia; nello storico bar i prodotti di Libera"
''La Repubblica'', December 19, 2011

References

Restaurants in Rome History of the 'Ndrangheta Abu Nidal attacks Palestinian terrorist incidents in Italy {{Restaurants in Italy