Who are the stores that present themselves with the letter T in Italy?

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10 Reasons to Visit the Tabacchaio Store:

1- To experience a traditional Italian store that hasn’t changed in years.

2- To believe how many ridiculous items you can find near the checkout.

3- To see classic games still available for sale.

4- To understand what’s with the store marked with a T sign outside.

5- To confirm that they really don’t sell ‘SALI’ salt even though it’s written on the sign outside.

6- To learn that tobacco and salt were once state-regulated and only sold in these stores – that’s why they are called that.

7- To occasionally peek at a family-run business with older parents and their younger children – spending their whole day behind the counter.

8- To recharge your local SIM card you bought, or to buy a local bus ticket – like in the old days.

9- To ask for directions to any Piazza and hear the local dialect.

10- To breathe some life into a store that seems stuck in time.

One of the most famous symbols in Italy, standing out among shops and cafes, is the T .

The letter T, as the starting letter of the word TABACCAIO, is a symbol of a shop that has a history of nearly 350 years. The inscription on the sign, SALI E TABACCHI, which appears below the letter T on each of the signs, conceals an interesting evolution of products under government oversight and control.

Do they really sell salt (SALE) in the shop? And since when tobacco (Tabacco)?

The story begins somewhere in the 17th century when Pope Alexander VII allowed the sale of tobacco products under the supervision of the Holy See. From here, one can deduce that the first tobacco shop opened in Rome and was a store that received a sales permit from the authorities for a specific product. The demand for tobacco was significant, apparently, as evidenced by the number of tobacco shops that opened in the 17th century, which was greater than bakeries and taverns. Another proof of tobacco’s importance was the tax imposed by Ferdinand II, King of the Two Sicilies, on imported tobacco, to facilitate the sale of local tobacco.

At the beginning of the 20th century, these shops took on the role of selling a malaria remedy, quinine (chinino), which afflicted the Italian peninsula, in addition to tobacco. Gradually, the shop became an ideal place to sell essential goods to the population, always with products under state supervision. By the early 20th century, there were already 28,000 such points of sale across Italy.

Salt had been a valuable commodity for many years, around which cities developed, it was used to pay wages (SALARIUM), roads were built to transport it (Via Salaria), and uprisings occurred when the tax on it was high (1543, Pope Paul III). Therefore, it was only natural that when the state of Italy was established, salt would be a monitored product.

The two main products, tobacco and salt (along with the malaria remedy), were the primary items sold in that ‘tabaccheria’, which explains the inscription still found on these signs today.
Tobacco products are still sold there, while salt is no longer available (it can be found in any supermarket), and over the years, these shops have also added lottery games, stationery, souvenirs, and children’s toys.