Florence · gelato
Badiani
The shop that turned the Buontalenti legend into Florence's most commercially significant flavour, on its own family's account: a 1969 competition win credited with fifty years as the best-seller. Recorded with an explicit hold rather than a clean recommendation, because the business now trading under that name is a 35-location international brand, not a single Florentine gelateria.
What to order
Buontalenti (also called Crema Fiorentina): cream, milk, sugar and egg, per the Pomposi family's own account (La Nazione).
What we know
- Founded 1932 by Idilio Badiani; bought by the Pomposi family in 1993, now run by second/third-generation gelatai Paolo and Patrizio Pomposi (La Nazione, 25 Jan 2026)
- The family's own account: in 1969 the shop won a citywide competition with its four-ingredient Buontalenti cream (cream, milk, sugar, egg), which has been its best-selling flavour for fifty years (La Nazione)
- Paolo Pomposi's account: his own father created a committee for the 'defence and protection of artisanal gelato' specifically because industrial gelato was gaining ground at the time — a direct, family-sourced link to the industrial-gelato problem this record investigates (La Nazione)
- Now operates 35 points of sale across the UK, France, Spain, Japan and Italy, including one beneath the Louvre pyramid in Paris, opened its first foreign shop in London in 2016, and plans further openings in Mantua and possibly Rome (La Nazione)
- CiboToday's own account of the Buontalenti legend credits Badiani as 'la più famosa gelateria a Firenze legata al Buontalenti' and quotes the shop's own claim to be 'l'unica patria del vero Buontalenti' (CiboToday, 19 May 2026)
- Status
- open
- Address
- Viale dei Mille, Firenze
- Maker
- Founded 1932 by Idilio Badiani; owned since 1993 by the Pomposi family (Orazio, and sons Paolo and Patrizio)
- Opened
- 1932
- Last checked
- 2026-08-21
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