Hotel Cipriani Venice

The Hotel Cipriani is a hotel in Venice. On May 26, 1958 Commendatore Giuseppe Cipriani, founder of Harry’s Bar in Venice and inventor of the Bellini cocktail, opened the Hotel Cipriani on the island of Giudecca, Venice. At the time, the price for a room was 8,000 Italian Lire and a Bellini cost 500 Italian Lire.


In 1976, Orient-Express Hotels was founded with the purchase of Hotel Cipriani in Venice, and began as the leisure division of Sea Containers Ltd and was later incorporated as Orient-Express Hotels which is a company from Bermudas.

The hotel offers a 24-hour private boat which takes guests across the lagoon to the mainland, to San Marco. The hotel's restaurants, the formal Fortuny Restaurant in the main 1950s part of the hotel or the more casual Cip's Restaurant whose terrace on the Canale della Giudecca faces the Piazza di San Marco, are open to both guests and independent diners.

The Hotel has seen many famous names step through the doors over the years, and keeps a Golden Book of celebrity guests.


The garden stretching between the Palazzo Vendramin and the main hotel building is called Casanova Garden because it is reported that the famous lover held clandestine assignations here.

The hotel pool was created when the Guinness family owned the iconic hotel. Its large size is allegedly blamed on a British architect who designed to an imperial scale and an Italian construction company that worked to metric. Whatever the truth is, the outcome is spectacular.