Claris Florence: on Lungarno Vespucci, where Florence is reflected in the Arno with timeless elegance, a new chapter in the city’s restaurant history is taking shape.
In the spaces that for decades housed the iconic Harry’s Bar Florence, today Claris is born, a restaurant and cocktail bar that restores life, identity, and vision to a symbolic address of the Italian twentieth century.
All the ingredients for an ambitious project are there, and they are not random.
On the one hand, the owner of the property, lawyer Pier Ettore Olivetti Rason, an increasingly central figure in the world of high-end hotels, who recently made acquisitions in Forte dei Marmi and Cortina, places that have entered the collective imagination thanks to cinema. On the other hand, there is Antonio Galati, a Roman entrepreneur and patron of the project, already well known in Florence for having given new impetus to Villa Tolomei, a five-star hotel on the hill of Marignolle. The operation is also supported by Gin Srl, the holding company of the Olivetti Rason group.
This partnership gave rise to Claris, not as a simple reopening, but as a second conscious life for spaces that have marked the history of Italian dining out.
The name is not a detail. Claris is a variant of Chiara, derived from the Latin clarus and encompasses precise meanings: bright, clear, illustrious. Light, understood as rebirth and openness, becomes the leitmotif of the entire project. A light that permeates the architecture, the cuisine, and the very idea of hospitality. Not nostalgia, but active memory; not rupture, but evolution.
The restaurant is spread over two floors with approximately 120 seats, with a completely renovated interior and concept. The design is warm, classic, marked by a measured elegance that conveys an intimate welcome, while maintaining space and functionality. Fine materials, refined fabrics, and meticulous attention to detail create a continuous dialogue between the history of the place and contemporary style, blending manufacturing tradition and innovation without forcing it.
At the entrance, the eye is drawn to a spectacular bar counter, entrusted to Christian Pampo, resident bar manager at Claris and a leading name in contemporary mixology, formerly at the St. Regis in Florence. The cocktail bar is not designed as a simple accessory to the restaurant, but as a space with a life of its own, capable of fitting naturally into the rhythm of the restaurant.
Here you can enjoy structured aperitifs, accompanied by a selection of dishes from the kitchen that also allow for a light, informal but refined dinner. The ground floor room is also designed to host small events, book presentations, social gatherings, business and association meetings: an open, dynamic, lived-in space.
The selection of cocktails, created by Christian Pampo, dialogues with the cuisine thanks to the creations of chef Niccolò Timpanaro in a play of references between mixology and gastronomy that reinforces the identity of the project.
The restaurant is located on the upper floor and is run by a young team, called upon to create cuisine that draws on Tuscan tradition as a solid foundation, using local and seasonal products whenever possible.
The menu offers four choices for each course—appetizers, first courses, second courses, and desserts—from land and sea, with the stated ambition of building a recognizable style, technique, and identity.
The touch is elegant, the combinations delicate, with a subtle French influence that emerges from the young chef’s training without ever distorting the Italian soul of the dishes.
Claris’ culinary philosophy moves along the borderline of accessible fine dining: refined but not rigid, creative but concrete. Each dish becomes a measured sensory journey, where the quality of the raw ingredients remains central and the gastronomic narrative retains a deeply convivial and human soul.
Claris is also a project that looks to the present with responsibility. The reopening has led to the re-employment of 19 kitchen and dining room staff, an important sign in a sector still marked by precariousness and high turnover. A choice that restores professional continuity and human value to a place that has made history.
With Claris, Florence has regained a place of great charm: a restaurant and cocktail bar that does not forget its past, but has decided to focus on what it can become.
A place where elegance and simplicity coexist, where the light evoked by the name becomes a real atmosphere, and where cuisine, design, and hospitality finally find a common voice. A place to experience “taste” but also culture, an important theme that Patròn Galati intends to pursue through events already in the pipeline.
With Claris, Florence rediscovers a place of great charm: a restaurant and cocktail bar that does not forget what it was, but chooses decisively to tell the story of what it can become. A place where elegance and simplicity coexist, where the light evoked by the name becomes a real atmosphere and where cuisine, design, and hospitality finally find a common voice.
In the evening, when the lights dim and the reflection of the Arno enters through the windows, Claris restores that rare feeling of being in the right place at the right time, without the need to raise your voice.
Claris is also an invitation to slow down: to enjoy a leisurely dinner, a cocktail that accompanies a conversation, a space where time does not rush by but allows you to linger.
