In May 1911, Thomas Mann first arrived at Lido Island and stayed there at the Grand Hotel Des Bains hotel. After the writer with his wife Catherine has been here more than once. But it was on that first trip, as he later wrote, sitting in the lobby in anticipation of the signal to the beginning of dinner, he watched the family of Polish aristocrats: mother, three daughters and a boy in a sailor costume. From this fleeting vision, Thomas Mann’s novel “Death in Venice” was born. Half a century later, the same Grand Hotel des Bans became the scene of the adaptation of the novel shot by the director Lukino Visconti.
Grand Hotel des Bains
Today, Lido is a marine resort, annually receiving thousands of guests of the Venice Film Festival. And until the end of the 19th century, he was one of the desert sandy islands, sharing the Venetian lagoon and the Adriatic Sea. Metamorphosis happened at the turn of the century, when a group of investors, as they would say now, took up the development of the territory and built several luxurious hotels in Lido. One of them is Grand Hotel des Bains – the same age as the age of the century, erected in 1900 about the project of the Rafaello and Francesco Brothers. And then it was a chic hotel with all the convenience possible at that time: round -the -clock supply of electricity, heating and hot water in rooms, elevators, phones. Interiors in the style of the Viennese secession and Italian eclecticism, spacious terraces, ballrooms. Grand Hotel des Bains was the first of the hotels of the island with its own beach, equipped with wooden flooring, with two long rows of striped linen awning and changing cabins. Around the garden was broken, which protected the privileged guests from prying eyes on onlookers and reporters.
Lido, Venice
Initially, the hotel was designed for 50 rooms, but after ten years their number increased to 191. Then, next to the Grand Hotel des Bans, its owners opened no less luxurious for the public. The resort was really popular among representatives of bohemia, aristocracy and the bourgeoisie.
Grand Hotel ExcelSior
Coco Chanel, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford were here (after his visit and claims about the absence of a golf field, such a lido appeared); In 1929, the organizer of Russian Seasons Sergey Diaghilev died at Grand Hotel des Bains. After the Venetian Film Festival was first held in Lidido in Palazzo del Cinema in 1932, perhaps all the world cinema star awards stayed here: Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert de Niro and others. Grand Hotel des Bains not only in the “death in Venice” Lukino Visconti, but in the Oscar -winning “English patient” Anthony Mingella (in the “Role” of the Cairo Hotel “Sheperd”).
In 1995, Grand Hotel des Bains moved to the Seraton hotel group control, and three years later – Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. In 2010, the hotel was closed for large -scale reconstruction. It is planned that after its completion in 2017, the usual numbers are converted into apartments, villas and Syuta; A covered pool, a fitness center, a cinema, a restaurant and a bar will appear. The reconstruction of another hotel – Grand Hotel ExcelSior – ended in 2013. In addition to elegant rooms in the Moorish style, your own beach is on the services of guests (where you can rent a hut for living),
Pool, tennis court, golf, terrace field, restaurant and bar.
