Hotel of the Week: The Iconic Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido Reopens After a Top-to-Bottom Refresh

After crossing the Venetian lagoon in a small fleet of ships on July 21, 1908, the 3,000 guests who arrived on the fragile barrier island known as the Lido were slack-jawed when they arrived at the Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido. The vast new pink-painted pleasure palace with 198 guest rooms—a romantic Moorish silhouette of domes, minarets, and ornate archways, an opulent palm court, and an array of still novel modern comforts, including telephones, electricity, private baths, and elevators—that had risen from the sands was a modern marvel.  

A little more than a century later, the palmy glamour of this legendary seaside address with stunning views over the Adriatic Sea is resonant again after a top-to-bottom renovation that necessitated a three-year closure. To the delight of fans of this fanciful palace, the ornate facades of the hotel, which display a candy box of different architectural styles, including Moorish, Gothic, Byzantine, and Liberty, have been meticulously restored, as has its famous Palm Court, now decorated with archival images of the actors, directors, royals, and cultural figures who have passed through over more than a century—Winston Churchill, John Steinbeck, and Elizabeth Taylor among them.  

This extraordinary pageant of famous faces is also explained by the fact that the Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido has been the home of the Venice Film Festival ever since it launched in 1932. Recently, the Venice festival has become even more prestigious and influential as a preferred showcase for independent directors and filmmakers.

Many of those starry guests request the hotel’s two top floors for their sweeping views of Venice and its lagoon, retiring to rooms decorated with a fantasy Orientalism that runs to jewel-toned wallpaper, wicker, and faux bamboo. Others might now prefer the jaunty Twenties retro look of the newly reimagined suites, which have decor in pistachio and dusty rose accented by Navy blue and white or seafoam green and white stripes, a wink at the conventions of nautically themed interiors without falling prey to the pedestrian stereotypes of buoys, shells, fish nets, and other detritus. Baths are light and spacious, and almost all of them still come with oversized old-fashioned soaking tubs. 

The Excelsior also has one of the most glamorous beach scenes anywhere in the Mediterranean, with ranks of private cabanas overlooking the fine, regularly groomed white sand. Cabanas are private, but there’s a fair amount of socializing over shared lunch tables, which is how to meet families from the countries of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire who’ve been vacationing here for generations, along with lots of Venetians who escape the tourist throngs in their city during the summer by heading here for the day. 

The hotel also has an outdoor swimming pool overlooking the sea, and the charming Excelsior Terrace restaurant, which serves dishes like a starter of tiny pink shrimp from the lagoon in a salad with cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and burrata; Boccone del Doge, beef cannelloni with bechamel sauce; and grilled cockerel with cacciatora sauce and baby potatoes. Amu, a new restaurant with a pan-Mediterranean menu, is scheduled to open next year.

What’s old is also enchantingly new, making the Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido the perfect solution for anyone who wants to visit one of the world’s great cities and also have a stylish beach holiday.