Grand Hotel des Bains

The Grand Hotel des Bains opened in 1900 on the Venice Lido, built in the Art Nouveau and Belle Epoque style then favored by the grand resort hotels rising along Europe's fashionable seaside destinations. Its long white facade, ornate wrought ironwork and beachfront position quickly made it one of the most celebrated hotels catering to European aristocracy and the wealthy visitors who flocked to the Lido's beaches each summer in the early twentieth century. The writer Thomas Mann stayed at the hotel in 1911, and the experience directly inspired his 1912 novella Death in Venice, whose central character likewise stays at a grand Lido hotel closely modeled on the Bains; the director Luchino Visconti later filmed much of his 1971 adaptation of the novella on location at the hotel itself. The building continued operating as a hotel through most of the twentieth century, hosting Venice Film Festival guests during the festival's early decades given its proximity to the Lido's festival grounds. The hotel closed in 2010 amid a broader decline in the Lido's historic hotel trade, and the building has since been converted into luxury residential apartments while retaining its original Belle Epoque facade.