It’s been more than a decade since I’ve visited Florence, so you will have to forgive that I missed the grand opening to the amazing Libreria Giunti Odeon. This fabulous mash-up of a cinema, bookstore and cafe premiered in November 2023 after years of renovation. The restore 1922 Art Nouveau movie theater/bookshop is housed in the historic Palazzo dello Strozzino. Built around 1457, and designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, the palazzo was owned by the Strozzino family until the 19th century. In 1904, it was bought by the Chiari family who eventually decided to build an elegant cinema.

After alternating periods as theatre and then cinema, in 2023 the Odeon, which still retained splendid Art Nouveau style, was renovated and reopened as the Giunti Odeon. Bookshop and Cinema. 

Open seven days a week, from 8.30 in the morning to the end of each night’s film, Giunti Odeon, or GO, as it is known to the locals, maintains its mission as a cinema. One screen guarantees nightly film screenings in their original languages, while a LED wall projects daytime entertainment in Italian and English. Throughout the theater are the bookshelves lined with 25,000-plus titles occupying the entire ground floor, including the foyer.