Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido Resort

On the evening of 6 August 1932 a screen was raised on the terrace of the Hotel Excelsior on the Venice Lido and Rouben Mamoulian's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was shown to an audience in evening dress. That was the first Venice Film Festival. The hotel had opened 24 years earlier, on 21 July 1908, as the flagship of Nicolò Spada's Compagnia Italiana Grandi Alberghi, and it still fills with the festival each September.

History

Nicolò Spada founded the Compagnia Italiana Grandi Alberghi, CIGA, in 1906 to make the Lido a resort for the whole of Europe, and the Excelsior was its statement. The architect Giovanni Sardi gave him a Moorish-Venetian palace on the beach with a central dome, towers at the corners and horseshoe arches, built in two years and opened in July 1908. The Hotel des Bains along the shore, where Thomas Mann set Death in Venice, belonged to the same company. The Palazzo del Cinema was built next door in 1937 to house the festival the hotel had started. After the CIGA decades and a long period as a Westin, the Excelsior is now independently run and keeps its original name.

Architecture and design

Sardi's building is a long façade on the Lungomare Marconi with the beach on the other side. Inside, the Moorish theme carries through the arches, the mosaics and the bar, and the ballroom, the Sala Stucchi, is decorated in stucco as its name says. On the sand the hotel keeps its rows of capanne, the white-and-blue wooden cabins that have been part of the Lido beach since the hotel opened, each rented for the day or the season. A jetty on the lagoon side serves the hotel's launch to St Mark's.

Rooms and suites

There are around 196 rooms and suites, facing the sea on one side and the lagoon and the Lido gardens on the other. The sea-facing suites with terraces are the festival rooms, booked a year ahead. Decoration is traditional, with Venetian fabrics and Murano glass.

Dining

The Tropicana restaurant serves dinner with the terrace open in summer, and a restaurant on the beach serves lunch to guests and to cabin holders. The Blue Bar on the terrace is the festival bar, where the deals and the interviews happen in September. Breakfast is served facing the sea.

Weddings and events

The Excelsior is a conference hotel as well as a resort, with the Sala Stucchi and a set of meeting rooms used for congresses and company events through the season. Weddings use the beach terrace for ceremonies and the ballroom or the terrace for the dinner, with the lagoon and the city as the backdrop for the boats bringing the guests.

Location

The Lido is the barrier island between the lagoon and the Adriatic, 12 km long and a few hundred metres wide. The hotel stands on the beach side at the centre of the island, next to the Palazzo del Cinema. From the Lido vaporetto stop at Santa Maria Elisabetta it is a ten-minute walk or a bus ride; the hotel's own launch crosses to St Mark's in about 20 minutes. Marco Polo airport is reached by water taxi across the lagoon or by bus and vaporetto, and Santa Lucia station by vaporetto. The hotel closes in winter and opens for the season in spring. As a luxury hotel in Venice it offers the one thing the city's palazzi cannot, a beach.