In May 1911, Thomas Mann first came to the Lido Island and stayed at the Grand Hotel des Bains. Afterwards, the writer and his wife Ekaterina visited here more than once. But it was on that first trip, as he later wrote, sitting in the hall waiting for the signal to start dinner, he watched a family of Polish aristocrats: a mother, three daughters and a boy in a sailor suit. From this fleeting vision was born Thomas Mann’s short story Death in Venice. Half a century later, the same Grand Hotel des Bains became the setting for a film adaptation of the novella, directed by Luchino Visconti.
Grand Hotel des Bains
Today, the Lido is a seaside resort that annually welcomes thousands of guests to the Venice Film Festival. And until the end of the 19th century, it was one of the deserted sandy islands, a chain separating the Venetian Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea. The metamorphosis occurred 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 luxury hotels in the Lido. One of them is the Grand Hotel des Bains, the same age as the century, built in 1900 to the design of the brothers Raffaello and Francesco Marchi. And then it was a luxury hotel with all the amenities possible at that time: round-the-clock electricity, heating and hot water in the rooms, elevators, telephones. Interiors in the style of the Viennese Secession and Italian eclecticism, spacious terraces, ballrooms. The Grand Hotel des Bains was the first of the island’s hotels to have its own beach, equipped with wooden decking, two long rows of striped linen awnings and changing cabins. A garden was laid out around it, which protected the privileged guests from the prying eyes of onlookers and reporters.
Lido, Venice
Initially, the hotel was designed for 50 rooms, but ten years later their number increased to 191. At the same time, next to the Grand Hotel des Bains, its owners opened the no less luxurious Grand Hotel Excelsior to the public. The resort was really popular among the bohemians, aristocracy and bourgeoisie.
Grand Hotel Excelsior
Coco Chanel, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford visited here (after his visit and complaints about the absence of a golf course, one appeared in the Lido); In 1929, the organizer of the Russian Seasons, Sergei Diaghilev, died at the Grand Hotel des Bains. After the Venice Film Festival was held for the first time in the Lido at the Palazzo del Cinema in 1932, perhaps all the world’s movie stars stayed here: Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert De Niro and others. The Grand Hotel des Bains was captured on film not only in “ Deaths in Venice” by Luchino Visconti, but in the Oscar-winning “The English Patient” by Anthony Minghella (in the “role” of the Cairo Shepherd Hotel).
In 1995, the Grand Hotel des Bains came under the management of the Sheraton hotel group, 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 rooms will be converted into apartments, villas and suites; There will be an indoor swimming pool, a fitness center, a cinema, a restaurant and a bar. The reconstruction of another hotel, the Grand Hotel Excelsior, was completed in 2013. In addition to elegant Moorish-style rooms, the hotel has its own private beach (where you can rent a hut),
swimming pool, tennis court, golf course, terraces, restaurant and bar.
