William Cash talks to the Rector of the Venerable English College about an important fundraising campaign to widen access to its archives.
The Caffè Peru’ on the Via di Monserrato may look from the outside like any normal bar tabacchi in Rome, selling strong espresso from a gurgling Lavazza coffee machine, cigarettes, lottery tickets and bomboloni (Italian doughnuts). By night it is a late haunt of Roman Bright Young Things. But its past – originating as a 14th-century pilgrim hospice – makes it perhaps the most historically important café in the city, being adjacent to the Venerable English College (known as the Venerabile, or the VEC) which owns it.
