#7 in Top 20 Venice for An Anniversary · ★★★★★
Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido Resort
Venice Lido, the original Film Festival hotel — the cinema-loving anniversary.
Venice Lido, the original Film Festival hotel — the cinema-loving anniversary.
"Venice Lido, the original Film Festival hotel — the cinema-loving anniversary."
Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido Resort opened in 1908 on the Lido beach (the Adriatic-facing barrier island that protects the Venice lagoon, accessed by 15-minute vaporetto from San Marco) and remains the working Lido flagship. Two hundred and forty-eight rooms and suites across the multi-building Moorish-Venetian complex, the upper-tier Royal Suite (with private beach terrace and direct Adriatic Sea access) is the working multi-bedroom flagship. The asset is the working Venice Film Festival heritage — the Excelsior is the official festival hotel since 1932, and the property has hosted every major film figure of the past 90 years (Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Hitchcock, Fellini, Visconti). The festival programme runs late August through early September; the working anniversary couple who plans the trip around the festival has the working cinema-loving anniversary asset. The Excelsior's private beach (the only hotel-private-beach in Venice), the working in-house dining at Tropicana, and the morning vaporetto to San Marco (15 minutes) handle the working day. Hotel Excelsior is the right pick for the anniversary couple where the Lido beach-position and the Film Festival heritage are the working assets — the trip's centerpiece is the morning Adriatic-swim and the working evening vaporetto to San Marco for dinner.
Royal Suite (the multi-bedroom flagship with beach terrace) or Junior Suite Sea View for the working couple-of-friends option.
Time the trip for the Venice Film Festival weekend (late August / early September) for the working cinema-anniversary asset. Swim the Adriatic at 7am — the working empty-beach morning. Take the vaporetto to San Marco at 11am for the working day.
Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido Resort sits within our broader Top 20 Hotels in Venice for an Anniversary list. It scored an aggregate 9.6/10 across the three editorial criteria — competitive against the field but, on an anniversary-specific factors, the angle above is what earned its rank. For the alternatives in the same Venice neighbourhood, see Venice Lido and adjacent. For a different city entirely, see the related lists below.
If you have already chosen the dates, our editor recommends booking the room twelve weeks ahead. The best suites with the right view orientation go first, and inventory for the popular months is quoted in months, not weeks. Suite-level rooms with private plunge pools or terraces — the ones that earn this rank — are typically the first to sell out.