Скачать или смотреть A corner of Rome that is forever England

(16 Feb 2018) LEADIN:
Italy may be famed for its coffee, but at the foot of one of Rome's most famous sights is a legendary tea shop.
Celebrating its 125th anniversary, Babingtons Tea Rooms is a slice of England where tea and scones take pride of place.
STORYLINE
Babington Tea Rooms, at the base of Rome's Spanish Steps, is more London than Rome.
Stepping inside feels like entering another world - clients sip exotic teas from mint coloured cups served in silver tea pots while nibbling on scones.
Along one wall is a table with cupcakes with a twist of creamy frosting. Jam filled pies and chocolate chip biscuits line up next to a glass tray with mignon cakes with pink sugar roses on top.
Chandeliers dripping crystals reflect in the many mirrors hanging on the walls between shelves lined with multi-colored tea tins from India, Sri Lanka, China, and Japan.
"It is a magical place," says Arianna Lobi, who has been working there for the past eight years.
The Tea Rooms were opened in 1893 by two young women, Anna Maria Babington and Isabell Cargill for the English population in Rome to take their tea and read their newspapers.
Rory Bruce is the co- owner of Babingtons Tea Room and the great grandson of co-founder Isabel Cargill.
"It was my great grandmother with her partner, my great grandmother being Isabell Cargill and her partner being Anna Maria Babingtons who had come to Rome on a Grand Tour trip and adored Rome, adored what was going on here.  It was very busy, a lot of English, a big English community was living here at the time – poets and authors and writers and so on and so forth. So they went back to England but they had left a piece of their hearts here in Rome and one of these things that they had noticed when they were here was that there was nowhere you could have tea. You could only buy it very occasionally and very rarely in pharmacies and it was used for medicinal purposes. So they thought, well we really would like to go back, how can we do it, how can we do it. In the end, at a certain point they said, right this is it, we want to do it, and they just left England together with my great grandmother's sister who was with them as well, and they arrived in Rome and initially set up the tea rooms with 100 pounds…they had a hundred pounds between the two of them."
At the time, tea was only available in a chemist's shop to be used for medicinal purposes. In addition to tea, these two enterprising young women provided something unavailable in Rome at the time - a proper ladies' bathroom.
Tea and toilets were a popular combination soon attracting both the English population living in Rome and upper crust Italians.
Babingtons soon became a favourite spot for Brits living in the Eternal City or for those passing through on the Grand Tour.
The Grand Tour, a leisurely voyage to nations in Europe to study everything from Renaissance art to ancient Greek and Roman culture, was once a tradition among the upper-class English. Venice, Florence and Rome were favoured spots.
Portraits of Isabell Cargill and Anna Maria Babington hang on the walls of the tea rooms where they seem to keep an eye on their business, now run by the great grandchildren of Isabell Cargill.
Sitting in the corner of the tea room, sipping a cup of tea, Rory Bruce recalls some of the exciting moments of Babingtons' history.  
The Tea Rooms managed to survive World War I, eeked through the Depression, and became popular among both fascists and anti-fascists in the 1930s.  
A photo of the recipe for "Gli scones di Guerra", "the war scones" made with war rations is a precious Babington heirloom.

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...