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A hundred years ago, the Venice Lido was one of Europe’s most glamorous playgrounds for movie stars and royalty, and there’s now going to be a bold attempt to recapture its glory days.

The Lido is an 11-mile strip of land dividing the Venice lagoon from the Adriatic. It comes alive once a year in September for the Film Festival, when it’s besieged by actors, journalists and paparazzi, but for the rest of the year it all goes quiet.

“The Lido has slowly turned residential and gone to sleep, covered in dust,” said Giovanni Gusso, President of the Lido’s municipal council.

Now, hundreds of millions of euros of private funding are being lined up to restore the area’s Art Deco and Art Nouveau gems. In addition, government money is being spent on a new terminal for the city’s vaporetti (water buses).

But (there always seems to be a ‘but’ in these planning developments) one aspect is meeting disapproval – and it concerns the plans to demolish a group of beach huts. These are not just any old huts – they were famously depicted in the iconic closing scene of Visconti’s 1971 film Death In Venice, starring Dirk Bogarde.

More than 2,000 people have signed a petition protesting at the plans to demolish those and the turn-of-the-century Bagni Alberoni pavilion at the south end of the Lido.

Stefano Bartoli, the owner of the Bagni Alberoni bathing establishment, said:

“If these plans go ahead, we will have to close, it’s that simple. It won’t be possible to stay open. And if we close, lots of jobs will be lost and the local community will die – so, too, will a little piece of history.”

by Andy Moreton

Luxique can offer the best available rates at the pick of the luxury hotels in Venice – including the elegant and tranquil Albergo Quattro Fontane on the Lido.

Some movies will always be inextricably linked with the city in which they were set and none more so than The Third Man, starring Orson Welles as Harry Lime.

It’s the 60th anniversary of the classic film noir that gave moviegoers a beguiling picture of post-war Vienna set against a haunting soundtrack of zither music. And even this long after The Third Man came out, there’s quite a little industry surrounding the film in the Austrian capital.

There is, for instance, a whole website devoted to it (www.thethirdman.net), in which the world’s leading expert on the film’s locations, Dr Brigitte Timmermann, offers the complete background to the making of the movie.

Dr Timmermann has also organised a tour of the locations. She says that, although the scars of the war have long disappeared, most of the sites have remained surprisingly unchanged.

“On this exciting tour, follow us through the cobbled lanes and hidden courtyards of old Vienna that inspired the author, Graham Greene. See the places where Harry Lime lived, appeared, disappeared and eventually died. Learn the fascinating story of how one of the all-time great films was made and what Vienna was like in the days of Allied occupation, Cold War espionage and the black market.”

Vienna Walks also plots the film’s locations, even down to the underworld of the city’s sewers, immortalised in the pursuit of Harry Lime. In addition, there’s a Third Man museum and the chance to see the film again with regular screenings at the Burg Kino on Opernring.

by Andy Moreton

Luxique’s Top Destination Vienna guide calls the Austrian capital ‘a truly inspiring destination’ and we can help you book the best luxury hotels in Vienna, including three on the Condé Nast Traveller Gold List, the Sacher, the Altstadt and the Grand.