Venice has two faces: the one visited by over a million tourists every year and the one where a small number of people live. This second city is largely mysterious to sightseers, and the Lido Island is one of its secrets seldom seen by the crowds. With a coastline battered by the Sirocco in winter and a sun-baked, mosquito-plagued summer climate, Lido remained uninhabited for decades, and was used mainly for military training.
It was only in 1900 that entrepreneurs decided to transform this strip of sand dunes into a site for leisure, modelled on the French beaches of the Belle Epoque. So began the frenetic construction of diverse and whimsical Liberty villas as well as the Moorish-revival Hotel Excelsior in 1908 and, eight years earlier, the Hotel des Bains. Seventy-one years later, the latter would become the setting for Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Thomas Mann’s 1911 novella Death in Venice, capturing the decadent beauty of this era of Lido’s history.
In 1932, Lido welcomed the Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica, and in 1937 the Palazzo del Cinema opened, but this was to be the end of the island’s old-world glamour. The postwar years saw the development of real-estate projects that screened off the glorious villas and hotels, and the overall charm of the place faded. Even the famous Hotel des Bains didn’t survive the transformation, and it now stands empty, an abandoned stone giant ready to fall down. Still, Lido’s heritage does seem to hang over the island with a melancholy languor, and although few traces of the golden era remain, you can still find it if you know where to look.
A few metres away from the Palazzo del Cinema is the Albergo di Quattro Fontane, a wooden chalet sleeping among the trees. ‘It is not a hotel; it is something else,’ says Bente Bevilacqua, the owner and guardian of this often overlooked gem. The story of the Quattro Fontane takes us back to 1573 when the place was called Casino Pisani or Ca’Pisani. Presumably built by Andrea Palladio for Daniele Pisani (the original symmetrical plan of the ground floor remains intact), it is believed to have been a second home for the wealthy Venetian family, as well as a vineyard and pleasure house. (Later, it would became neighbour to the Austrian fortress of the Quattro Fontane and witness to the chaotic history of Venice after the fall of the Republic.)
A project to turn the building into a hotel at the turn of the 20th century aimed to put the place in direct competition with the Excelsior and Des Bains, but the first attempts failed due to the outbreak of World War I and several cholera epidemics. But in 1922, the albergo finally opened its doors for the first time, with an extended dining hall and upper floors housing guest bedrooms. The real life of the hotel began in 1954, however, when it was purchased by the Bevilacqua family.
Born in the 1930s in Nice to a Danish mother and a Venetian father, Bente Bevilacqua trained as an architect when her parents purchased the Albergo di Quattro Fontane, and she took over the hotel with her sister Pia after their parents left it to them, cherishing it ever since. As a legacy, they received a beautifully curated interior – a Wunderkammer created by their Danish mother. It took a generation to fill every room with objects brought back from all around the world, carefully imagined and positioned in dialogue with Venetian antiques. Bente tells the story of the place with a ‘French “r”’, as she says, and this permanent marker in her accent says something about a city that has always been inhabited by people from all origins. The eclecticism of the decoration embodies something of this Venetian spirit, an openness to the world.
It is perhaps this décor that inspired the intelligentsia of Venice to sit in the little bar, smoking cigars and discussing the world among Secessionist drawings hanging on saffron-painted woodwork. This atmosphere is revived every year during the Venice Film Festival, when the hotel becomes a headquarters of sorts for cinephiles.
Every room is arranged with a corpus of objects that create particular narratives: the wooden corridor with its coat hooks recalls something Austro-Hungarian, while the turquoise reading room is decorated with old French freemason aprons and 18th-century Norwegian wooden seats. Bedrooms on the upper floors are decorated with a mix of ascetic timber furniture and colourful Sorrento tiling. The dining hall retains relics of the Pisani era, with panelling and wheel chandeliers from Maestro Bellotto, set among four Palladian columns on chequerboard tiles. Enhanced with Danish influences from Bente’s mother, such as bright-red lacquered high-backed chairs that serve as seating by the fireplace, the room still retains the atmosphere of what was once a ‘casino’ for 16th-century Venetians. The pendulum clock in the main hall gently clicks away the time, and calmly attentive staff transport one away from preconceived notions of what a stay in Venice might be like.
The city is far more multi-faceted than one might think. There are still many secrets to be uncovered, and the Albergo di Quattro Fontane is proof of that. A delicate and Romantic spirit shimmers in this sleepy hotel, one that recalls Lido’s rich past through unexpected objects reunited through time. Anyone staying here or coming for a late drink after a day on the beach can catch a piece of it. Reclining on the rattan chairs under the plane trees, admiring the hand-painted ashtrays and drinking Kaiserwasser in the last light of the setting sun, one can easily imagine what it might have been like to live during one of Venice’s golden eras – whether in the age of the Pisanis or the time when the Hotel des Bains and Excelsior were focal points of local high life. Albergo di Quattro Fontane opens one’s eyes to another side of the city – that second face of Venice that exists almost outside of time. Forever, one can only hope.
For more information, visit quattrofontane.com
