La Tinèra: an old wine cellar in the centre of Lugano

La Tinèra is a Ticinese grotto in the centre of Lugano, at Via dei Gorini 2: an old wine cellar just off Piazza della Riforma, where you eat risotto, polenta and ossobuco, and the merlot comes in a tazzino, a ceramic bowl.

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The cellar at La Tinèra, laid and empty: the long table with the yellow placemats and the tazzini, the dark beams, the white niches with bottles

A Tinèra is the cellar where the wine vats were kept.

Ours is a few steps below the street: you come in from an alley off Via Pessina and go down.

Dark beams overhead, bottles in the arched niches, and about 50 seats.

The vat-shaped lantern lettered La Tinèra, lit in the evening, with the “Restaurant” plaque below it on the façade — La Tinèra’s lantern

La Tinèra’s door ajar under the lit orange awning at dusk, the stairwell lit inside — The door, under the orange awning

Merlot in the white tazzino on the yellow placemat, printed in Italian with “Typical Ticinese atmosphere” — “Typical Ticinese atmosphere”, it says on the placemat.

The dining room at La Tinèra ready for service: tables for four laid, the beams, the niches with bottles and the blackboard

Giampiero has been running the grotto for about fifteen years.

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How to get here