Humphrey Bogart kept a bottle of his preferred whiskey in a cabinet at the shop, as if he had joined a club, while Gentilini and his circle of friends would keep long tabs, indirectly having the House of Battistoni sponsoring their trips and their art. Roman style pouring down from Trinita’ dei Monti and the Spanish steps, to the heart of the city, like a river touching Piazza di Spagna and streaming down Via Condotti, the Caffe’ Greco, the silversmiths’ shops, and in front of Palazzo Torlonia, designed by Bernini, by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, by the old Alinari shop, dwelling of Roman iconography. Arrived so far, facing the seraphine in the limpid courtyard’s fountain, and near the unique works of art adorning the Battistoni atelier, here they come. Princes and queens, tycoons, aristocrats, the actor of the moment, the writer, the celebrity, the poet and the entire Beau Monde! One after the other, the most charming (possibly Kirk Douglas) along with the shyest (almost certainly Ben Kingsley), all equally treated by Guglielmo Battistoni, with that spontaneity and disenchantment that makes the true Roman perfectly at ease in front of a head of state or a peasant.
The list would be endless: Luchino Vis- conti and John Ford, Gianni Agnelli and Rockefeller, Moravia, Malaparte and Jean Cocteau, Tyrone Power and De Sica, Ingrid Bergman and Audrey Hepburn, Josephine Baker and Anna Magnani, Hermes and Lagerfeld, Dado Ruspoli, Prince Torlonia, Prince Orsini, and the list carries on. Today these stories, at times narrated by old clerks or Mr. Battistoni, are silently reflected into the walls and mirrors, and they charmingly permeate Battistoni’s Rome store with their subliminal tales.
