Antica Cartotecnica

Antica Cartotecnica was opened in Rome in 1930 by Elisa Berti and her family, and the shop has occupied the same address, Piazza dei Caprettari 61 in the city's historic center, for close to a century since. The business describes itself as having watched Rome change around it while keeping its own character and atmosphere intact.

The shop's stock spans both new and vintage writing instruments: fountain pens, inks and refills sit alongside writing paper, stationery, leather goods and a collection of vintage pens and inkwells sold as collectibles. That mix of contemporary retail and curated vintage inventory is central to how the shop presents itself, as a destination for both everyday writing supplies and pieces aimed at collectors.

Beyond selling pens, Antica Cartotecnica also services them: the shop offers pen repair and maintenance, custom leather work, and printing services for business cards, letterhead and personal writing paper. It also handles personalized gifts and decorative objects alongside its core stock of pens, inkwells and vintage collectibles. Those in-house services, kept running across close to a hundred years in the same Roman piazza, are what distinguish it from a purely retail stationer — it functions as a working atelier for writing instruments as much as a shop.