Just down a floor or so from the roof track is Cafe 500 where you are presented with what can only be described as one of the motherlodes of small Italian car design – long before Issigonis et al got going on the Mini.

It’s an assemblage of pieces of carved wood which together make up the Master Model for the iconic shape of the Cinquecento Nueva – the new Fiat 500 introduced in 1957 to replace the previo us, rather comic looking “Topolino” (see later pics – there was one in the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile).

The pic of the accompanying plaque will give you its detailed  background but what blew me away was the fact that this was lovingly and painstakingly carved with planes and spokeshaves by motor craftmen not designed on a computer programme. It is an actual physical legacy relic of a classic piece of social history which can be viewed and walked around and is not languishing on some hard drive.

Great coffee too!