ristorazione — Firenze · Toscana
On Via delle Belle Donne, in the medieval heart of Florence, a small walled-up window in the façade tells eighty years of history: it is the buchetta del vino (wine hatch), from which glasses of aperitivo are still served today, the first sign of an osteria that has stayed true to itself and to the city that houses it.
The buchetta del vino is a small walled-up window in the façade, as wide as a bottle: Florentine osterie were already using them in the seventeenth century to sell wine without opening the main door. At Osteria Belle Donne it is still in use: you approach, ask for a glass, and the ritual resumes exactly as it has always been, right in the heart of Florence's historic center.
Opened in 1945 as an outlet selling oil and wine from the Viviani della Robbia estate, the story of this address takes a new shape in 1985, when it becomes an osteria. The 1966 flood is already behind it, the walls have absorbed decades of Florence: the dining room gathers that memory into an intimate, close-knit atmosphere, a city refuge where time slows without ever stopping.
From the stove come the classics Florence does not argue with: ribollita thick with cavolo nero and beans, pappa al pomodoro, trippa alla fiorentina, pappardelle al cinghiale, bistecca alla fiorentina. The menu follows the season and tradition, without compromise: every dish carries the exact name of the place and the technique that gave rise to it.
The page tells of the section devoted to truffle — taglierini, risotto with gorgonzola and radicchio, filetto — and every detail of an address that Florence considers its own.
