GOODBYE NONNA SILVI, YOU MADE US FEEL AT HOME
Silvana Bini has died at 85 in Montespertoli. Remembering a woman who brought Tuscan cooking into lives far away, through a family bakery and her grandchildren’s phone.
The first video to go viral, her official biography recalls, was not a recipe. It showed a grandmother reacting to her grandson’s tattoo. It was October 2022. Before collaborations, books and awards, the two things that would make Nonna Silvi so recognisable were already there: a family and her very own way of saying what she thought.
Silvana Bini died during the night of 30–31 October 2026, at home in Montespertoli. She was 85. Her grandson Gabriele, who helped introduce her online, remembered her in Il Tirreno as ‘love in its purest form’. These are a family’s words before they are a public farewell. They bring the person behind that familiar name back to the centre.
Before the videos, a working life
The name Nonna Silvi came when Silvana had already lived through decades of work, difficulties and change. Born on 26 March 1941 in Montespertoli, her story did not begin in front of a camera. The publisher’s account of Le ricette di una vita includes shifts as an ironing worker and factory worker, children to raise and a difficult separation. And time found for cooking.
That detail gives a different weight to the hands we saw so often on screen. Before becoming familiar on social media, they had accompanied a life full of responsibilities. Meals were connected to the people they were for, the ingredients available and the work that had to fit into a day.
In 2006 her son Marco opened Forno Martini in Castelfiorentino. Silvana joined the kitchen, preparing sweet and savoury food. The bakery came before fame: when the public began discovering her, she already had a trade, routines and skills to share.
A phone between grandmother and grandchildren
Her grandchildren brought that presence online. The official story remembers Gabriele and Simone, a phone recording and everyday life gradually reaching people beyond the family. It was a meeting between generations through something concrete: they understood the medium; she had a life to tell.
Watching her, you could learn a dish and stay for her frankness. You did not have to be the same age or live in Tuscany to recognise the pleasure of a conversation while cooking. In her kitchen, work and a joke could share the same space.
Success brought very different experiences. Her first book with De Agostini appeared in 2023; in 2024 her cooking reached Doha, where she prepared dishes for Qatar’s royal family. There was a German cookbook edition, social media recognition and television, including Celebrity Chef. A remarkable path built on abilities that existed long before the first video.
Finding her in the kitchen
Her recipe archive includes a pumpkin soup. We have chosen it to remember her in the setting through which so many people knew her: a recipe to follow, her face and her way of addressing viewers. Watch the official video, linked from her own website.
The recipe on Nonna Silvi’s website.
Recipes hold on to people too
The title Le ricette di una vita — a lifetime of recipes — now invites us to pause over both ideas. There are dishes: acquacotta, cacciucco, rice fritters and ricciarelli. There are also the years in which they were made, the people they were cooked for and the circumstances that turned them into memories.
Interviewed by La Cucina Italiana in 2023, Silvana spoke about her pasta e fagioli and how she liked to vary it, sometimes adding sausage. A small but valuable detail: in the hands of someone who cooks, tradition includes personal preferences and adjustments. Learning a recipe often means listening to precisely those details that do not fit into an ingredient list.
For those who followed her, a farewell can begin here. Choose one of her dishes, prepare it carefully and tell the people at the table where it came from. Or ask your grandmother, a parent or someone dear how they make that dish everyone in the family recognises at the first taste. Write down the quantities, but ask about the gestures too.
Silvana’s funeral is announced for the afternoon of Monday 2 November, at Sant’Andrea church in Montespertoli. Our thoughts are with her family. For those who found company in her videos, an archive remains to revisit without rushing. And perhaps a recipe to start cooking, with a thank-you in her memory.
