Outside Caffé Sant’Eustachio students and cabbies, bankers and brokers, pundits and senators sip espresso and mock the news. Starbucks, the US coffee chain with nearly 27,000 locations worldwide, had opened its first Italian store in Milan. “Blasphemy,” pronounces an archivist from the Palazzo della Sapienza. He stirs his demitasse and flicks crema on the sidewalk three times. The mosaic of a stag with a cross between its antlers paves the bar’s entrance.

Starbucks may be a $14 billion franchise, but Caffé Sant’Eustachio, perhaps Rome’s most revered coffeehouse, is a cult. The café takes its name and emblem from a nearby church dedicated to St. Eustace, the patron of hunters and a fictional 1st century martyr.