In Naples, espresso is short, dark and intense. In Trieste, ordering one requires knowing a different vocabulary. In Turin, coffee culture is closely tied to historic cafés, chocolate and the rise of Italy’s roasting industry.
The cup may be small, but the differences between Italy’s coffee traditions can be significant. Blends, roasting levels, serving temperatures, quantities and even the way coffee is ordered vary from one city to another.
Naples, Trieste and Turin offer three particularly distinctive examples of how espresso has developed into a cultural ritual as much as a drink.
There is no single technical formula for a Neapolitan, Triestine or Turin espresso, and cafés in all three cities now offer a wide range of blends and preparation methods. As a benchmark, the Italian National Espresso Institute defines its Certified Italian Espresso using 7 grams of ground coffee, water at 88°C, pressure of 9 bar, an extraction time of around 25 seconds and approximately 25 millilitres in the cup.
Local traditions have built their own identities around these basic parameters.
Naples: dark, intense and very hot
Few Italian cities have turned coffee into as deeply rooted a social ritual as Naples.
Traditional Neapolitan espresso is generally associated with a darker roast, a full body and a strong flavour profile. The historic Gran Caffè Gambrinus, one of the city’s best-known cafés, describes its espresso as dark, dense and hot. Its blend combines Arabica and Robusta beans, producing persistent crema and flavours associated with hazelnut, cocoa and toasted bread.
The choice of beans also affects the result. Arabica generally contributes sweetness and aroma, while Robusta tends to add body, bitterness, caffeine and crema.
That does not mean every café in Naples serves the same coffee. Rather, the profile represents a longstanding local tradition, increasingly contrasted with the lighter roasts often used by specialty coffee shops to highlight fruity, floral and acidic characteristics.
The lever machine and the hot cup
Preparation is also part of Naples’ coffee culture.
Traditional lever machines have played an important role in the city, with the barista’s movement of lowering and releasing the long lever becoming part of the ritual. Such machines require experience in managing the grind, extraction and pressure.
Then there is the cup itself. In the Neapolitan tradition, it is often preheated and sometimes served extremely hot, helping the small amount of coffee retain its temperature.
The ritual extends beyond preparation. Drinking a glass of water before the espresso, chatting at the counter and consuming the coffee quickly are all part of the social experience.
So is the famous “suspended coffee”, or caffè sospeso, in which a customer pays for two coffees but drinks only one, leaving the second for someone who may not be able to afford it.
In Naples, coffee is therefore more than a recipe. It is a social gesture.
Turin: where coffee meets chocolate
Around 900 kilometres north, Turin developed a different coffee tradition, shaped by historic cafés and the city’s long association with the roasting industry.
The city’s elegant 19th-century cafés became meeting places for politicians, intellectuals and figures associated with the Risorgimento. At the same time, Turin emerged as an important centre for coffee roasting, helping turn coffee from a café ritual into a major industrial business.
Turin also developed a particularly strong relationship between coffee, milk and chocolate.
The best-known example is bicerin, a traditional Piedmontese drink recognised since 2001. It combines coffee, chocolate and milk cream and is served in a glass.
Bicerin should not be confused with a Turin-style espresso. It is a separate drink, but it illustrates how deeply coffee became intertwined with the city’s chocolate culture.
From historic cafés to specialty coffee
Turin’s coffee culture is now evolving again.
Alongside its historic cafés and established roasting industry, the city has embraced the growing specialty coffee movement. At the GAM, Turin’s Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bar Baglio has introduced a specialty coffee offering inside the museum.
Specialty coffee places greater emphasis on the origin and variety of the beans, processing methods, roasting and extraction techniques. Lighter roasts are often used to highlight characteristics associated with the coffee’s origin, while filter methods increasingly sit alongside traditional espresso.
Turin therefore offers a meeting point between its historic café culture, industrial roasting tradition and the newer specialty coffee movement.
Trieste: where ordering coffee has its own language
In Trieste, the difference becomes apparent before the coffee even reaches the table.
The city has developed its own vocabulary for ordering coffee. A standard espresso is a “nero”, an espresso with a little milk foam is a “capo”, while a capo served in a glass becomes a “capo in B”.
There are other variations, including the “gocciato”, an espresso topped with a small amount of milk foam.
The terminology remains part of everyday coffee culture and has become one of the city’s most distinctive traditions.
A coffee culture shaped by the port
Trieste’s relationship with coffee goes back centuries and is closely linked to its role as a major trading port.
After Emperor Charles VI declared Trieste a free port in 1719, the city developed into an important commercial centre connecting the Habsburg Empire with Central Europe. Coffee arrived there as green beans, long before it became the finished drink served in cafés.
The trade created an ecosystem that remains important today, involving green coffee importers, logistics companies, warehouses, roasters, equipment manufacturers, decaffeination businesses and specialist training institutions.
Around one-fifth of the roughly 600,000 tonnes of coffee imported into Italy each year passes through the port of Trieste, according to figures cited in 2026.
Coffee has also shaped the city’s cultural identity. Trieste’s cafés became places not only for commerce but also for reading, writing and debate, with writers including Italo Svevo, Umberto Saba and James Joyce associated with the city’s café culture.
Three cities, three interpretations of Italian espresso
Putting Naples, Turin and Trieste side by side shows why “Italian espresso” does not necessarily mean the same thing everywhere.
In Naples, the emphasis is on intensity, heat and ritual. Turin combines coffee with the history of elegant cafés, chocolate and industrial roasting, while Trieste’s coffee identity is closely connected to its port, international trade and distinctive vocabulary.
The technical foundations may be similar, but local history and habits have created very different interpretations.
The espresso itself may disappear in just a few seconds. The culture surrounding those few millilitres, however, tells a much bigger story about each city.
Be First to Comment