100 years
Cantina Piemontese is located in the historic Ca’ dei Tencitt building — a place where the true history of Milan can still be felt. Its basement once served as the old coal cellar of the Duomo Factory and today this space is known as the Sala dei Tencitt. In the past, the building overlooked the “Laghett,” the closest docking point to the Duomo, where barges loaded with marble and coal arrived for its construction. The coal was unloaded into the building’s basement by the “tencitt,” charcoal workers so called because they were “dirty and small” (from the Milanese word tencio, meaning dirty, combined with the diminutive -itt, meaning small). All this makes the restaurant a place truly unique in its kind.
Small and dirty
Being “small and dirty” turned out to be their unexpected blessing. The veil of coal dust that covered them acted like a natural antiseptic, and during the plague outbreaks in Milan not one of them fell ill, despite the harsh working and sanitary conditions of the time. As a gesture of gratitude for having emerged unscathed, the charcoal workers commissioned the fresco that can still be admired on the outer wall of the building, dedicated to the Madonna dei Tencitt.
Lounge bar
The story of the Ca’ dei Tencitt basement continued to unfold through the years, evolving with the times into Milan’s very first American Lounge Club back in the 1960s—a hotspot where legendary musicians of the era performed live. In the 1970s, it transformed into a vibrant haven for artists, intellectuals, epicureans, and bohemians, until it was ravaged by two devastating fires during the late-’70s student riots and left abandoned ever since.