Italian Streetside Cafe Style And How to Get It at Home

Italian Streetside Cafe Style
And How to Get It at Home

Walking around Venice, Rome, and Bologna last week, we saw our fair share of streetside cafes. There's a simplicity and elegance to these outdoor dining spots that's inspired us to think about creating a similar look at home...

Keep it simple. Most of the restaurants we passed had nothing more than a small dining table with a couple of wooden cafe chairs. No fancy dishes, no elaborate canopies. Most tables didn't even have room for a floral arrangement. We loved the casual, thrown-together look.

Mix textures. We saw a lot of metal tables with wooden chairs in different styles. Our favorite chairs were the limed wood versions shown above, spotted at a streetside cafe in Bologna. Covered in scratches and spots, they looked beautiful against the crispness of a white tablecloth.

Try layering tablecloths. The best example we found of this look was the cafe shown in the third photo above. A black tablecloth under a white covering looked tailored and chic.

SHOWN ABOVE
• 1 Cafe in Bologna
• 2 Cafe in Bologna
• 3 Cafe in Bologna
• 4 Cafe in Venice
• 5 Cafe in Rome

For more Italian cafe style, see Maxwell's post on Decor in Siena and Pienza, Italy.

Photos: Sarah Coffey

Comments (1)

I love this look! This is something we'll be working on at our house next summer. Quite inexpensive too, we plan to get most of the pieces from thrift stores - a few mis-matched dishes included. We'll definitely need room for a candle on the table and twinkle lights around the area.

posted by Jennifer Squires on October 9th 2009 at 12:26pm
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