Ristorante Cooperativo

The Ristorante Cooperativo, colloquially known as Coopi, is a restaurant in Zürich, Switzerland, known for its association with 20th-century left-wing political figures as well as the anti-fascist, trade union and Italian immigrant movements in Switzerland.

The restaurant's roots are in the Società Cooperativa Italiana Zurigo, founded by Italian immigrants in 1905 for "furthering Socialist cooperation". Apart from a library, the society also founded the Ristorante Cooperativo to allow immigrants to eat at affordable prices, and continues to operate it today.

During World War II, the Cooperativo became a nexus of Socialist resistance against European Fascism, as many exiled Italian socialists fled to Switzerland. Among them was Filippo Turati, the founder of the Italian Socialist Party, whose bust still graces the restaurant. The Coopi was also where the Avanti! and L'Avvenire dei Lavoratori were being edited during the war years. These newspapers, the only Italian-language media in opposition to the Fascist regime at the time, were regularly being smuggled from Zürich to Italy in double-bottomed suitcases.

In the post-war years, the restaurant became a meeting-point of the Zürich left-wing intelligentsia, particularly during the student movement's heyday in the late 1960s. The later Federal Councillor Moritz Leuenberger was among the Coopi's regular guests as a student. Led by the later National Councillor Ezio Canonica, the Coopi was also the base of the opponents of James Schwarzenbach's anti-immigration initiatives of the 1960s.

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