Harry’s Bar

Harry’s Bar is located on the ground floor of a building overlooking the Grand Canal, right next to the Vallaresso pier. It was founded by Giuseppe Cipriani in May 1931.

Regulars at this bar included Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote and many many others. Hemingway had his own table here in the Concordia Room and immortalized the bar in his famous novel Across the River and Into the Trees. Joseph Brodsky celebrated Christmas there with Susan Sontag in 1977 and visited it many times on other occasions.

The bar owner’s inventiveness led to an expansion of the range of drinks and Venetian cuisine: the Bellini cocktail, named after the great Renaissance artist, is a mixture of sparkling Prosecco wine and white peach juice.

Later, the Rossini with pureed strawberries, the Canaletto with raspberries, and the Tintoretto with pomegranate juice appeared. And Carpaccio, named after another Venetian artist of that era: thin slices of raw beef with olive oil, white sauce with lemon and Parmesan cheese, first prepared for Countess Amalia Mocenigo in 1950. In 2001, this famous bar was designated a national monument.

Another famous American writer Gore Vidal whose ancestors actually emigrated from Venice to the New World in his 1985 book traces Harry`s bar roots to his compatriot who came to this lagoon fleeing the Prohibition and financed Cipriani`s venture.