Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido Resort

The Hotel

Hotel Excelsior was built in 1908 — at the height of the Lido di Venezia's Belle Époque heyday as the seaside resort for the European cosmopolitan class — and was conceived from the start as the Adriatic's most ambitious beach palace. The architect Giovanni Sardi worked in a Moorish-Venetian-revival style, with onion domes, mosaic tile work, horseshoe arches, and an enormous Palm Court covered loggia at the centre — a deliberate quotation of Granada's Alhambra and the North African seaside palaces. The hotel opened to international acclaim and from its first season hosted the Habsburg, Bourbon, Russian, and British aristocracies in summer; the Lido itself became, briefly, the most fashionable beach destination in continental Europe.

The Excelsior's defining historical role was sealed on August 6, 1932, when its terrace hosted the inaugural Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica — the Venice International Film Festival, the world's oldest. The opening night premiere was Frank Capra's Forbidden, and the audience included Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, James Cagney, Joan Crawford, and Boris Karloff — all of whom stayed in the hotel's rooms during the festival's first edition. The festival has continued every September since (with three war-year exceptions), and the Excelsior has remained the central festival hotel — the press headquarters, the principal star residence, the Sala Casinò screening room, and the red-carpet stage. The guest book through nine decades has included Winston Churchill, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Marlene Dietrich, John Steinbeck, Ingrid Bergman, the Aga Khan, Vittorio De Sica, Silvana Mangano, Isabella Rossellini, Claudia Cardinale, Monica Bellucci, Kirk Douglas, Al Pacino, Nicolas Cage, Tilda Swinton, Johnny Depp, and George Clooney.

The hotel underwent a significant restyling in 2018 that included the renovation of the façade, the public rooms, and 197 rooms, along with the creation of a Presidential Suite in the central dome with 360-degree lagoon and Adriatic views. A second multi-year restoration completed for the May 5, 2026 reopening of the 2026 season has restored the Palm Court to its original Moorish-revival glory, introduced a new signature terrace restaurant, and delivered the first wave of redesigned guest rooms in the property's contemporary phase. The hotel operates as a Marriott Luxury Collection property and runs from spring through autumn (typically late April through early November) with a seasonal closure for the winter months.

The position is the second proposition: directly on the Adriatic Sea on the Lido's central Lungomare with its own private beach (one of the Lido's two true private hotel beaches, the other being the sister Hotel des Bains a kilometre south), 600 metres of guarded sand with the property's signature striped cabanas. Ten minutes by complimentary water shuttle from the hotel pier to Piazza San Marco. Two outdoor pools (one heated, one freshwater), tennis courts, a 9-hole golf course at the adjacent Circolo Golf Venezia, and the most extensive children's beach programme of any Venetian luxury hotel. For the Venetian summer trip with families, for couples for whom the city is one component of a beach-and-Adriatic-and-Venice itinerary, and for the September Film Festival booking, the Excelsior is the only Venetian property that delivers the seaside-resort experience as a primary product. The Lido is approached either by water shuttle from the hotel's pier or by the Lido vaporetto — five times an hour from Piazzale Roma to the Lido's San Maria Elisabetta dock, then ten minutes' walk down the Lungomare to the hotel.

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