Via de' Tornabuoni & Procacci's Truffle Rolls
Why is it significant?
You are on Via de' Tornabuoni, the most elegant street in Florence, all polished stone palaces and the big names of fashion. Between the designer windows, look for a small, old-fashioned shop front with jars and bottles behind the glass. That is Procacci, and it has been here since 1885.
Key Facts
| Place | Via de' Tornabuoni & Procacci's Truffle Rolls |
|---|---|
| Address | Via de' Tornabuoni 64r, 50123 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.77180, 11.25150 |
| Part of Walk | Tripe, Truffles and Wine Windows: A Food Lover's Walk Through Florence |
| Generated | Generated |
You are on Via de' Tornabuoni, the most elegant street in Florence, all polished stone palaces and the big names of fashion. Between the designer windows, look for a small, old-fashioned shop front with jars and bottles behind the glass. That is Procacci, and it has been here since 1885.
It was opened by Leopoldo Procacci as a fine-food shop, and it built its reputation on one tiny thing: a soft little bread roll, filled with butter blended with truffle. A couple of those and a glass of white wine became the afternoon ritual of Florentine society, a snack for ladies coming from the dressmaker and gentlemen coming from the bank.
Truffles are serious business in Tuscany. The most precious, the white truffle, is found in autumn in the woods around San Miniato, between Florence and Pisa, by men who go out with trained dogs, often at night, and never tell anyone where their best spots are. In San Miniato they still tell the story of a giant white truffle of more than two kilos, found in 1954 and sent as a gift to President Eisenhower.
The street itself is named after the Tornabuoni, an old merchant family. Lucrezia Tornabuoni was the mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, a poet, a businesswoman and one of the shrewdest minds in the Medici house. In the nineteenth century this became the street of the foreign colony, of English bankers, tea rooms and reading rooms. The Gabinetto Vieusseux, the famous lending library and reading room founded in 1819, opened nearby, and every visiting writer seemed to pass through it.
Florentines will tell you that the truffle roll is not food, it is punctuation, a pause in the day. Now walk the last stretch north to the top of the street, where it opens into a little square and a severe stone palace with a very small door in its façade.