Otello alla Concordia
Painters who could not pay at Otello alla Concordia once settled their bills with canvases that still crowd its walls.
Why go
After the war this was where Italian film people ate. Monicelli, Antonioni, Zeffirelli, Fellini and De Sica ate at its tables, with Sophia Loren, Monica Vitti, Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio Gassman. Ettore Scola found the idea for his film La cena here. Without exaggeration,
Sandra Ianni of Epulae News wrote, after the war the restaurant was the place where all of Italian cinema grew up, where Neorealism and the commedia all'italiana were celebrated
(Epulae News, 2017). The Berlinale screened a documentary about the room, Francesco Ranieri Martinotti's Il segreto di Otello, in 2015: The 'trattoria' of Nora and Otello soon became the home and office of the likes of Fellini, Pasolini, De Bernardi and many others
(Berlinale).
The site fed travelers long before that. Ianni traces it to an eighteenth-century inn for travelers and pilgrims. In the nineteenth century a Madame Smith ran it as the Concordia, a meeting place for artists from northern Europe. Giuseppe Caporicci, called Otello, took it over with his wife Nora in 1948. In 2017 their grandchildren Giulia, Cecilia and Andrea were greeting guests. You reach it through the courtyard of Palazzo Ludovisi Boncompagni. Inside are three vaulted rooms with traces of frescoes and a veranda with a Roman marble basin and a century-old wisteria (Epulae News, 2017).
Turismo Roma lists Roman classics such as carbonara, amatriciana and saltimbocca alla romana, at an average of 30 euros a head without wine (Turismo Roma, 2025). The food blog La cucina dei Vianello ate three dishes here on a Monday in 2017. The fried alicette (little anchovies) were excellent: fennel seeds mixed into the flour gave the fry an extra gear,
and they came in a paper cone. The rigatoni all'amatriciana were really good, the guanciale crisp, the sauce excellent.
The tonnarelli cacio e pepe were not: too salty, the pecorino dominant, and not peppery enough, the pepper overwhelmed
(La cucina dei Vianello, 2017). Daria Reina, co-founder of the Rome boutique Chez Dede, still counted it among her regular restaurants in 2024 (The Relisher).
Call before you go, because the restaurant's own website was down for maintenance in October 2026.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the fritto di alicette, excellent for La cucina dei Vianello (2017).3
- Order: the rigatoni all'amatriciana, really good for the same blog (2017).3
- Avoid: the tonnarelli cacio e pepe, unbalanced for the blog (2017).3
Good to know
- Booking: call 06 679 1178.
- Where: in the courtyard of Palazzo Ludovisi Boncompagni, with doors at Via della Croce 81 and Via Mario de' Fiori 40/A, a few steps from Piazza di Spagna.
Verdict
could-visit — Go for the courtyard room where Fellini, Pasolini and the postwar film crowd ate, and for the fried anchovies one food blogger praised in 2017. Call ahead to check that it is serving.