This coffee shop is more like a time capsule

It’s definitely not Starbucks.

In fact, the first impression you might get of Caffe Reggio, the Greenwich Village coffee house — yes, with two “f”s — is that its name could be Nobucks.

It’s cramped, very old and dark.

And the bathroom! Well, you are better off waiting until you get home.

“Old World quaint” is a good way to describe it.

But when you glance around the extremely crowded room, you soon realize that this place is something special. Something extremely interesting is going on here — look at all that artwork!

There are, in fact, over 80 pieces of art — some dating back centuries, according to the owner.

The most noticeable object is a huge, shiny, 115-year-old cappuccino machine that sits against a back wall like the tabernacle on the altar of a Catholic church.

The machine, a showpiece that was created for the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, can be fired up with either coal or gas, but it hasn’t been used since 1990. It requires too much work in a day and age when a cup of coffee can be made in about a minute with a Keurig.

The owner of Caffe Reggio, Fabrizio Cavallacci, had the gauges, valves, bronze decorative angels and horses fixed and polished a few years back so the machine sparkles. Comedian Bill Cosby wanted it back when he wasn’t using all his money on legal bills.

According to the Caffe’s literature, this was the first cappuccino machine of its kind brought to America.

Caffe Reggio’s previous owner, a barber named Dominick Parisi, moved it to the current location on MacDougal Street in 1927.

The Caffe started because Parisi would offer cups of coffee to customers who were waiting for a shave. Eventually the shaves ended but the coffee continued to flow.

Cavallacci, who inherited Caffe Reggio from his father, Niso, called me the other day from Rome. Cavallacci said that when he was young, he told his father that when he inherited the place, he was going to replace the artwork with fakes. “My father said, ‘Why would you do that?’”

So he didn’t.

Customers today can enjoy their drinks and food while sitting on a 600-year-old bench once owned by the Medici banking family that ruled Florence in the 1400s.

Overhead hangs a painting by a student of the great 16th-century Italian artist Michelangelo Caravaggio that Cavallacci had restored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art 35 years ago.

Cavallacci was told that Caravaggio came up with the idea for the huge portrait and that he did the sketch from which the student worked. If Caravaggio had done this painting himself, in today’s market, it would be worth several times what most Greenwich Village buildings are worth.

The funny thing is that I’ve been to the Caffe a number of times and never noticed the artwork.

In fact, I don’t think many customers do. And the juxtaposition of old and new is astounding.

The other day, for instance, a customer, a guy with headphones, worked on his laptop while sitting on the ancient bench, totally unaware, it seemed, of his glorious surroundings.

In a sector where, as of Oct. 2, there were 13,172 Starbucks in the US, employing 170,000 people, it is comforting to know there is still a place for Cavallacci’s unique little cafe.

Bill Rau, an expert in Old Masters paintings, from New Orleans, took a video tour of the place. He was fascinated. “Dining is just another form of art,” he said.

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