Viterbo, thirteenth century. The wait dragged on so long that the city rose up: it locked the palace doors, tore off the roof and cut the table down to bread and water. Behind the key were left desire, quarrel and everything that could no longer be celebrated. From that confinement the conclave was born. Here, centuries later, the door closes once again. But the feast is about to begin.
From the Latin cum clave, “with a key”: yes, under lock and key.
Fire is what binds the two shores of this house: Italian produce and Spanish, treated alike. Spaghettone di Gragnano. Cinta Senese. Dry-aged beef. Podolica Caciocavallo. Sourdough bread. Little left to say that the smoke doesn’t.
And facing the grill, La Barra | Parrilla Experience: you eat watching the fire, served by the people who cook.
The brick runs bare from wall to wall and the beams show from below. In the middle, the golden sun; at the back, the staircase that splits the house in two.
The stained glass shares out the light while there is any. After that, the candle stays.
Upstairs, at the end of the staircase, the house keeps a room it does not show. It is not booked: it is asked for. And when it is granted, the door closes and the rest of the world stays outside until the end of service.
The menu is not arranged by starters and mains. It is arranged like a ceremony — Opening, Offering, Meditation, Communion, Consecration and Closing — and it is followed in that order.
Cavallers follows the line of the Roman decumanus and appears under that name in documents from the fifteenth century, when the families who shared out the Kingdom of Valencia lived here, one Gothic palace at a time.
The Pontdefusta project did not add another layer: it took away the ones that were there. Underneath were the stone, the brick and the wood, and there they have stayed, in plain sight and unclad. Light comes in through the stained glass while there is day; after that, the candle stays.