Al Bar, every Thursday at 6 PM Italian time — the week in Italy, served the way Italians actually argue about it. Six short sections in the rhythm of an aperitivo, from the first Coca Zero to the bill. What people are debating, who said what to whom, the summer hit nobody admits to loving, the political verdict being delivered at the counter. Ten minutes of reading. The price of a coffee a week.

It’s Thursday, six o’clock, the heat has finally landed — 37 degrees in the forecast, the Azores anticyclone glued to the peninsula — and three stools down someone has already opened with “hai visto?” Around the bar a strange Italian week: a nineteen-year-old jumped into Monaco harbour on Sunday, a Roman walked off the Philippe-Chatrier in tears the same afternoon, and a man walked out of a courthouse in Rimini at 2:30 in the morning, free. In between, a general from La Spezia announced he now has more party cards than Salvini, Ferrari built its first car that doesn’t make a sound, and the trains today are striking in pieces. Pull up a stool — six rounds, ten minutes, the week the way we actually argue about it. Salute.

Una Coca Zero

Sunday afternoon in Monte Carlo. The lights go out at the most claustrophobic circuit on the calendar, and from pole position a kid in a silver car simply leaves. Andrea Kimi Antonelli — nineteen, Bologna, Mercedes — leads every lap from lights to flag, sets the fastest lap, wins Monaco. It’s his fifth consecutive victory of 2026 (China, Japan, Miami, Canada, now this), and the first Grand Chelem — pole, win, fastest lap, race led start to finish — by anyone this young, in any era.

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Al Bar, every Thursday at 6 PM Italian time — the week in Italy, served the way Italians actually argue about it. Six short sections in the rhythm of an aperitivo, from the first Coca Zero to the bill. What people are debating, who said what to whom, the summer hit nobody admits to loving, the political verdict being delivered at the counter. Ten minutes of reading. The price of a coffee a week.

It’s Thursday, six o’clock, the machine behind the counter hissing, and three stools down somebody has already opened with “hai visto?”. Summer is barely here and it has already handed us the bill: a week under a beach umbrella now costs almost a quarter more than it did five years ago, and the lettino is quietly turning into a luxury good. Around it, the usual June noise — a deputy back in the wrong kind of headline, a quarrel over a military parade, a popstar who has annexed a stretch of Sicilian coast for a wedding — and, for once, a little free joy arriving from a tennis court in Paris. The bar won’t reconcile any of it; it just keeps pouring while we shout. Pull up a stool — six rounds, ten minutes, the week the way we actually argue about it. Salute.

Una Coca Zero

Tuesday afternoon, a Mercedes SUV drifts off the Biella–Cossato superstrada and ends up in a ditch near Vigliano Biellese, in the rain. The man who climbs out unharmed is Emanuele Pozzolo (deputy, ex–Fratelli d’Italia, right), and the name should ring a bell. This is the one who, on New Year’s 2024, at a Pro Loco party in Rosazza thrown by the village mayor — Francesca Delmastro, sister of justice undersecretary Andrea Delmastro (Fratelli d’Italia, right), who was also there with half his security detail — pulled out a mini-revolver to show it around. A shot went off. It caught the bodyguard chief’s son-in-law in the leg.

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Al Bar, every Thursday at 6 PM Italian time — the week in Italy, served the way Italians actually argue about it. Six short sections in the rhythm of an aperitivo, from the first Coca Zero to the bill. What people are debating, who said what to whom, the summer hit nobody admits to loving, the political verdict being delivered at the counter. Ten minutes of reading. The price of a coffee a week.

Thursday, 7PM. Outside it’s thirtytwo degrees and it’s still May. Inside, the spritz is already sweating on the counter — and so is the country. A long weekend is coming, the second of June, the first real ponte of the year, and Italy has quietly decided to start summer two weeks ahead of schedule, with or without the calendar’s permission. Pull up a stool. Next round’s on us.

Tonight, in order of pouring: a man who won an election the party wouldn't let him run in, and a singer who called her track Summer Song and dared us not to laugh. Then the quiet round — five Italians who went down into a sea cave off the Maldives and never came back up. Then Sinner, two sets clear in Paris and finished by the heat before Cerundolo could finish him. We pour the spritz over Jovanotti and Alfa, two voices and one sea, and the argument nobody's settled: who actually wins the summer when the charts belong to the rappers. We raise our voices over a school bell in Emilia-Romagna aimed straight at the heart of August, and a strike that shuts the country on the eve of the ponte. And we close the bill with three — Venice gone right, Garlasco back on every screen, and a weekend of finish lines with no Italian in front. Six rounds. Sit down.

Una Coca Zero

Two small ones while the ice melts.

In Enna, a man the Partito Democratico refused to lend its own symbol to went and won anyway, with sixty-four percent. Asked whether the party had made a mistake leaving him to run alone, he shrugged it off: no, they did the right thing — that’s exactly how we picked up all these votes. The most Sicilian sentence of the week, and it wasn’t even a battuta. It was a strategy.

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Welcome back to Al Bar.

Every Thursday at 6 PM Italian time, we pull up a stool next to you and walk you through what Italians are actually arguing about this week. Six short sections, served like an aperitivo: Una Coca Zero, una birra, un’altra, uno spritz, un gin tonic, il conto. Ten minutes to read. The price of a coffee a week, not a spritz.

New here? Start with the manifesto. Si comincia.

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On the counter this week:

Italy spent seven days doing what it does best: turning a tennis tournament into a national group hug, then immediately starting a fight about everything else.

Inside this week’s menu:

• Sinner just did something no Italian had done in fifty years — and the country can’t stop talking about who else was in the stands.

• 900 towns vote this weekend, and Venice is the city to watch. Why a local election is being read as a national verdict — and what to say when your Italian friend asks who’s winning.

• A man drove a car into a crowd in Modena last Friday. What we’re learning isn’t what anyone expected — and the conversation Italians are actually having about it is not the one on TV.

• Eurovision and the final of Amici owned the weekend back-to-back. We’ll tell you which one mattered, why the schedule itself became news, and the one sentence that signals you’re plugged in.

• The summer tormentone race is on. What a tormentone is, why Italians claim to hate it, and the five songs fighting to own June, July, and August — with a leaderboard.

Plus three lines to drop next time an Italian friend asks “hai visto?”

Pour yourself something. The first round is below.

0. Una Coca Zero

You just sat down. Still sober. Warming up.

This week Italy did the thing Italy does best: it turned a tennis tournament into a national group hug.

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Subscribe today and the first week is on us. Activate your 7-day free trial now and you’ll get this issue (#0) and next Thursday’s (#1) before deciding. If you stay, it’s €5 a month — a coffee a week, not a spritz. If you don’t, you’ve still walked out with two menus and a few good lines to use at the bar.

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Now — to the counter.

Imagine it’s Thursday evening. You walk into a bar in Trastevere, or Brera, or some piazza in a town you can’t pronounce. You order. You stay. And around you, the talking starts.

Two hours between work and dinner. Someone is shouting about the manager who shouldn’t have changed the midfield. Someone else is defending a singer everyone else is mocking. The guy at the counter has just delivered a verdict on the government that the woman next to him is already dismantling. Nobody is right. Nobody really wants to be. The point is the conversation.

This is the Italy you came for. The one you can’t read in the news, can’t book on a tour, can’t quite catch even when you’re standing in the middle of it — because the references fly past you. Hai visto? Ma dai. Ma figurati. You laugh half a beat late. You nod at the wrong moment. You feel the door close right when it was about to open.

AL BAR is the key to that door.

Every Thursday at 6 PM Italian time, we pull up a stool next to you and walk you through what’s actually being argued about in Italian bars this week. Not the polished news. The loud version. The one with opinions, grudges, in-jokes, and verdicts.

We serve it like a real aperitivo — one round at a time, two hours of talking, the conversation getting louder as the night goes on:

• 0. Una Coca Zero — three or four bite-sized stories with a punchline. You just sat down. You’re still sober. You’re warming up.

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