Ditta G. Poggi (Poggi Belle Arti)

Ditta G. Poggi dates its trade to 1825, a founding the shop itself marks in its name — "belle arti dal 1825" — and in a "200 anni" anniversary marked on its own site. Over two centuries it has served Rome's working artists, with sources naming Giorgio de Chirico, Mario Schifano and Piero Dorazio among the painters who bought materials there — a client list spanning Metaphysical painting through Rome's postwar avant-garde.

The business now runs from four Roman addresses rather than one — Via del Gesù near the Pantheon, Via Cardinale Merry del Val in Trastevere, Via di Ripetta near Piazza del Popolo, and Via Po — a spread that reads less like retail expansion and more like a shop that never left the neighborhoods where artists actually work. Its catalogue covers the full working range of a fine-art retailer: watercolours, acrylics, oils, tempera and gouache paints; pencils, pastels and graphite; brushes; paper and sketchbooks; canvas and painting supports; easels; gilding materials; and printmaking supplies.

What distinguishes Poggi from a newer multi-branch retailer is the two-century line behind it: a single family trade whose four current shopfronts sit within walking distance of the city's own art academies and studios, still selling to the same kind of working painter its earliest ledgers would have served.