Harry's Bar

Born in 1900, Giuseppe Cipriani was a simpatico barman with a warm smile and a human touch in the smart Hotel Europa, dreaming of opening his own bar and restuarant someday. His chance came when he loaned an American named Harry Pickering some money in 1929, and Harry surprised him by paying him back with enough extra to open a bar for 'high society'.

Since it opened in May 1931 in a former rope warehouse on what was then a dead end lane (there's now a bridge linking it to Piazzetta San Marco), Harry's Bar was an immediate success.

Cipriani's personality and attention to detail quickly made a hit with anyone who was anyone passing through Venice: on one memorable day in 1935 four crowned heads of Europe came for lunch.

In their wake came Sinclair Lewis, Alfred Hitchcock, Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, Humphrey Bogart, Peggy Guggenheim, Charlie Chaplin, Jan Morris, Orson Welles, the Aga Khan, Aristotle Onassis, Maria Callas, Henry Fonda, Woody Allen, Helen Hunt, Quentin Tarantino and Nicole Kidman. For decades, Gore Vidal spent every New Year's there, sometimes even with arch enemies like Truman Capote. 'It's neutral ground,' he said.