Six Days Exploring Italy’s Best Bars

Food, Cocktails and Hospitality at ALTO Cocktail Festival

Exploring Italy’s bar scene usually involves a fair amount of travel.

You might have a drink in Milan one evening, take the train to Florence the next day, and then continue to Bologna or Rome. You move from one hotel to another, visiting a different bar in each city. That journey is, of course, part of the pleasure of discovering Italy.

But once a year, for six days, some of the country’s leading bars come together in one place.

The setting is Cervia, a resort town on the Adriatic coast, and the occasion is ALTO Cocktail Festival.

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The festival takes place at ALTO Rooftop, on the seventh floor of Villa del Mare Spa Resort. Its terrace overlooking the sea brings together bars, restaurants, chefs and pizzaioli from across Italy, along with guests from abroad.

The 2026 edition marked the festival’s fifth year, with 24 teams from Italy and six from other countries taking part. Over six days, industry professionals and cocktail enthusiasts gathered in Cervia, and people who would normally be found in different cities shared drinks in the same place.

ALTO Cocktail Festival is not a trade show where visitors move from one tasting booth to the next. Nor is it quite like a conventional guest shift, where a well-known bartender takes over the counter for a single evening.

After spending all six days there, it became clear that the festival offers more than the chance to experience several celebrated venues at once.

The cocktails, food and music, and the conversations shared while looking out over the sea, all form part of the same flow.

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From the Evening Light to Late-Night Pizza

ALTO Cocktail Festival begins while there is still light in the sky.

From 7 to 9 p.m., L’Aperitivo Italiano takes place in the lounge on the resort’s ground floor. A different bar is invited each evening to serve an aperitivo in its own style, accompanied by live cooking.

At 9 p.m., the focus moves to the rooftop on the seventh floor, where the Restaurant Experience and Bar Experience begin.

For the Restaurant Experience, ALTO’s Leonardo D’Ingeo and Niccolò Amadori work with visiting chefs and bartenders from Italy and abroad to create a pairing menu served for one night only.

At the same time, the Bar Experience brings cocktail bars together with chefs specialising in pizza or barbecue to present their own pairings.

As dinner progresses, the sea that was still bright at the beginning of the evening gradually disappears into darkness. Then, sometime after 11 p.m., the atmosphere changes again.

It is time for the Dopofestival.

The people who had been seated at tables enjoying dinner now gather around the bar with cocktails in hand. Guests find themselves talking more closely with the people who have prepared the food and drinks.

Chefs and bartenders who usually work in their own venues spend the evening around the same counter.

The programme follows a set schedule, but the transitions feel effortless. From aperitivo to dinner and then late into the night, people and conversations flow naturally from one part of the evening to the next.

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Different Places, Seen from the Same Rooftop

The line-up changes every evening over the six days.

The opening night began with an aperitivo by Ruggine, followed by a Restaurant Experience featuring Moebius Milano and Lubna Milano. Later, Racine and O’ Fiore Mio brought the night to a close with cocktails and freshly baked pizza.

The following evening featured FòLia Bar & Lab, Momento, La Ménagère, Il Locale Firenze and Elementi Fine Dining, with 50 Spirito Italiano and I Vesuviani taking over the late-night programme.

On the third day, the line-up expanded beyond Italy.

Daniel Pappa joined from Svanen in Norway; Benedetta Romano and Giulia Caffiero came from Geranium in Copenhagen; and Oslo’s Himkok also took part. Italian and Nordic approaches to food and bar culture met on the same rooftop.

The following evenings brought more names, including Gucci Giardino, Ruby Copenhagen, Piano35, BOB Milano, Atrium Bar and Bar 1930.

The chefs taking part included Enrico Croatti, Enrico Marmo, Federico Sisti, Satoshi Hazama and Edoardo Tilli. Among the pizzaioli were Davide Fiorentini, Federico Di Maria, Francesco Di Maria, Marco Manzi and Matteo Lo Iacono.

The final Dopofestival featured Nucleo Roma and Vesper Bar.

Looking over the programme, it begins to resemble a journey from one place to another: from Romagna to cities across Italy, and then beyond the country’s borders, particularly towards Northern Europe.

Yet without leaving the rooftop, each new plate and cocktail made it feel as though I were visiting a different bar, restaurant or city.

The 2026 edition also introduced a programme of talks. Speakers and participants exchanged views on subjects including food and drink pairings, the future of drinking culture, and the relationship between pizza and cocktails.

Drinking and eating were not the only reasons to gather. Bringing together people from different parts of the industry and giving them space to talk about their work was also part of the festival.

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The Host Behind the Festival

Spend six days at ALTO and there is one person you see again and again.

Niccolò Amadori is the festival’s founder and director, as well as the bar manager and creative director of ALTO Rooftop.

One moment he is speaking with the staff; the next, he is welcoming a newly arrived guest or checking in with a chef, bartender or sponsor.

He must be busier than almost anyone else there, yet he never appears hurried. He does not seek the spotlight, but whenever his presence is needed, he is there.

Watching him move through the festival, he seems less like a bar manager than an experienced hotel general manager. More than making the event look spectacular, he appears concerned with making sure that everyone there feels comfortable.

This way of working reflects the hospitality that the Amadori family has valued for many years.

One of its origins is Le Giare, the restaurant Niccolò’s father, Claudio Amadori, opened in 1995 in the basement of the family’s country house in Montiano, in the province of Forlì-Cesena.

What the family developed there was not limited to serving food. It also involved maintaining a connection with the surrounding area and thinking carefully about how to welcome people and what kind of time they would spend there.

Twenty-five years later, in 2020, ALTO Rooftop opened on the panoramic terrace of Villa del Mare Spa Resort.

The festival reflects the same approach that began at Le Giare. Despite the number of celebrated venues and chefs taking part, no single person is made to feel like the star.

The chefs, bartenders and pizzaioli create the evening together. Once their work is done, they gather around the same counter and talk.

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Bringing Niccolò’s Ideas into the Kitchen

Another important figure in ALTO Cocktail Festival is Leonardo D’Ingeo, who has led ALTO’s culinary programme since 2026.

If Niccolò is the host who brings the festival together, Leonardo is his counterpart in the kitchen, turning those ideas into food.

Originally from Puglia, Leonardo grew up around dairy products and other ingredients through his family. After gaining experience at Le Giare, he moved to Paris to work at the two-Michelin-starred L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon Saint-Germain.

He later spent four years at Cà-ri-co in Milan, working with the relationship between food and spirits. After returning to Puglia to work at Masseria Francescani, he eventually joined ALTO.

What stands out in his cooking is that it does not pursue visual surprise for its own sake. Instead, he allows the character of the ingredients to remain clear.

He works with fermentation, vinegar-making, preservation and controlled oxidation. Acidity, in particular, is used not simply as an accent, but as an element that brings movement and balance to the dish as a whole.

Through his cooking, Leonardo gives a clear form to ALTO’s long-standing aim of bringing the restaurant and bar closer together.

Today’s ALTO has grown from the work of three people with different roles and from different generations: Claudio’s experience from more than 30 years in restaurants, Niccolò’s contemporary perspective and Leonardo’s cooking.

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A Place That Makes You Want to Return

Italy has beautiful landscapes, history, wine and food.

Yet when I look back on those six days, what stays with me most is the people.

The bartenders praised the work of the chefs, while the chefs spoke about the people who produced their ingredients. The organisers gave their guests the spotlight, and local participants naturally welcomed those who had travelled from farther away.

No single person became the centre of everything. Instead, everyone remained attentive and respectful towards the people around them.

Watching them, I began to think of hospitality not as exceptional service, but as creating a place where others can feel at ease.

ALTO Cocktail Festival ends after six days, but the interest sparked there continues afterwards.

You want to visit the bar that made the cocktail you drank, or book a table at the restaurant of the chef whose food you tasted. You want to travel to the city where a bartender you met works and have another drink at their counter.

I had come to Cervia with the idea of exploring Italy’s bars without travelling between them. By the time the festival ended, my list of places to visit had only grown longer.

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ALTO Cocktail Festival 2026 — Guest Line-up

The 2026 edition of ALTO Cocktail Festival brought together bars, restaurants, chefs and pizzaioli from across Italy and from cities including Copenhagen, Oslo and London. The main guests appearing over the six-day programme are listed below.

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DAY 1｜May 24

Ruggine — Bologna, Italy
Fabio Tammariello / Davide “Davo” Patta

Moebius — Milan, Italy
Enrico Croatti / Luca Sinisi

Lubna — Milan, Italy
Marco Masiero

Racine — Milan, Italy
Francesco Ismenghi

O’ Fiore Mio — Faenza, Italy
Davide Fiorentini

AGUARDIENTE — Marina di Ravenna, Italy
Jimmy Bertazzoli

Ristorante Fuba — Rimini, Italy
Enrico Fusi e Angelo Barletta

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DAY 2｜May 25

FòLia — Lecce, Italy
Federico D’Agati

Momento — Monforte d’Alba, Italy
Enrico Marmo / Jacopo Rosti

La Ménagère — Florence, Italy
Denis Paonessa

Locale Firenze — Florence, Italy
Alessandro Mengoni

Elementi Fine Dining — Brufa, Italy
Andrea Impero

Cinquanta Spirito Italiano — Pagani, Italy
Natale Palmieri

I Vesuviani — Pomigliano d’Arco, Italy
Federico Di Maria / Francesco Di Maria

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DAY 3｜May 26

Geranium — Copenhagen, Denmark
Benedetta Romano / Giulia Caffiero

Frangente — Milan, Italy
Federico Sisti

Himkok — Oslo, Norway
Federico Biserni / Alessandro Marin

Svanen — Oslo, Norway
Daniel Pappa

Dry Milano — Milan, Italy
Edris Al Malat / Lorenzo Sirabella

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DAY 4｜May 27

Sali — Milan, Italy
Alessia Bellafonte

Gucci Giardino 25 — Florence, Italy
Martina Bonci / Giovanni Garofano

HAZAMA —Milan,  Italy
Satoshi Hazama 

Ruby — Copenhagen, Denmark
Christian Borrelli 

Il Nido — San Mauro Pascoli, Italy
Eros Castrogiovanni

Sentaku — Bologna, Italy
Nicolò Ribuffo / Andrea Guarnieri

Pizzeria Giotto — Florence, Italy
Marco Manzi

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DAY 5｜May 28

Barrier — Bergamo, Italy
Nicolò Rossi

Dialogue Lounge — Brescia, Italy
Adrian Cristian

Piano35 — Turin, Italy
Simone Sacco / Fabio Moruzzi / Christian Balzo

BOB — Milan, Italy
Cesar Araujo

Podere Belvedere — Pontassieve, Italy
Edoardo Tilli

Cascina dei Sapori — Rezzato, Italy
Antonio Pappalardo

Rita’s Tiki Room — Milan, Italy
Edoardo Nono / Alessandro D’Alessio

Sogni — Milan, Italy
Matteo Pauiello

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DAY 6｜May 29

Club Derrière — Rome, Italy
Gabriele Roberto

Atrium Bar, Four Seasons Hotel Firenze — Florence, Italy
Edoardo Sandri

1930 — Milan, Italy
Benjamin Cavagna

Ex Gattabuia —Tolentino, Italy
Andrea Giuseppucci

Crunch — Rome, Italy
Matteo Lo Iacono

Nucleo — Rome, Italy
Davide Diaferia

Vesper Bar — London, UK
Lucia Montanelli

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