Passing through the burnished iron door, visitors arrive in the bar area, where the project's core language is immediately established. An all-stainless-steel counter and matching cabinetry stand out against a richly textured backdrop of masonry walls, stone columns and exposed timber beams. The contrast is sharp yet not abrasive: industrial clarity heightens the tactile presence of the older structure, while the historic setting lends warmth and gravity to the new elements.

This first room also sets out the café's spatial logic. On the left, a pair of arched openings reveal the open kitchen; on the right, another pair of arches lead into the principal sitting hall; a staircase at the rear rises to additional seating on a mezzanine level. Long sightlines and carefully framed thresholds establish a scenography of connected spaces that unfolds gradually, each room framing the next like a sequence of theatrical stages.

The main hall is where this scenography becomes most expressive. Large glazed openings connect the space with the portico and piazza beyond, while a perforated stainless-steel partition stretching across the back of the room offers filtered views towards an inner courtyard at the rear of the building, now planted as a birch garden. Pleated to recall a theatre curtain, the screen lends the space a layered theatricality that is further animated by large-format Belle Époque-inspired posters by artist Stefan Marx, set within the building’s original arched openings behind it. Overhead, a custom coffered ceiling in okoumé plywood, engineered for both acoustic and lighting needs, introduces a warm rhythmic geometry; below, a polychrome mosaic floor provides a more playful counterpoint.

The furniture, custom-designed by AMAA in collaboration with artist Nero/Alessandro Neretti in the same okoumé plywood and black leather, draws on two unlikely references: the disciplined seriality of Donald Judd and the practical directness of New York subway seating. A central double-sided bench runs through the space like a spine, dividing larger dining tables from smaller round café tables positioned towards the square. Functional and social at once, the arrangement allows different tempos of use to coexist within a single room.