Giuseppe Cipriani
Giuseppe Cipriani
Giuseppe Cipriani was born in Verona in 1900. He was four years old when his family moved to Schwenningen am Neckar in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, where he spent his childhood. Giuseppe was 14 when World War I broke out. He and his family returned to Verona where he began his working life as an apprentice at one of the best pastry shops in the city. When he was 18 and the war the was over, he decided to become a waiter, working in various large hotels in Italy and abroad until he found work in Venice, first at Hotel Monaco and then at Hotel Europa-Britannia as a barman.
It was there that in 1927 Giuseppe met Harry Pickering, a young American student who, together with his elderly aunt and her young companion, often frequented the Hotel Europa bar. When his aunt left him, Harry had no money and turned to Giuseppe Cipriani for a loan. Giuseppe gave him 10,000 lire, a considerable sum for a waiter in those days. Three years later, in February 1931, Harry returned to Venice and as a thank you he gave Giuseppe 40,000 lire. A short while later Giuseppe used the money to open his own bar, calling it Harry's Bar in honour of Mr Pickering. The bar was housed in a small room used to store rope, near St Marks Square. Giuseppe transformed it into a simple, elegant and light restaurant. The date was 13 May 1931.
A few years later begins the story of one of the most famous inns in the world. In 1934 Giuseppe decided to take on a new challenge and opened his own inn (locanda) on a lagoon island which at the time was not known to many people. That island was Torcello. Within a short time Locanda Cipriani had won praise from many with its refined simplicity and the unique beauty of the Venetian lagoon.
At the end of World War II, when the rich and famous began to regularly frequent Harry's Bar and Locanda Cipriani in Torcello - driving its success on to new heights - Giuseppe started making plans for a new project. In 1953 he bought a small plot of land on the island of Giudecca, just across from St Marks Square and the island of San Giorgio, to build a hotel.
Giuseppe Cipriani with Ernest Hemingway in Torcello
(in the photo: Giulia and her sister Gabriella)
November 1948
Giuseppe Cipriani near the Hotel Cipriani's swimming pool
But it wasn't until 1958 that Giuseppe Cipriani, with the help of Guinness brewery boss Lord Iveagh, managed to carry out his project. The Cipriani Hotel was born. Today, it is still considered one of the most luxurious and famous hotels in the world.
Not long afterwards, in 1962, Giuseppe built another hotel in Asolo - Villa Cipriani - owned by Lord Iveagh. This was yet another success story! However, a few years later Giuseppe decided to sell his stake in these two hotels (although they still bear his name ) so that he could devote his full attention to his favourites: Harry's Bar in Venice and Locanda Cipriani in Torcello.
Giuseppe's family helped him run his businesses throughout his long, passionate career as a restaurateur and hotelier. There was his sister-in-law Gabriella (his wife Giulia's sister), his daughters Bruna and especially Carla, and his son Arrigo. In the years that followed, it was Arrigo and Carla that took over their fathers ventures, one taking Harry's Bar and the other Locanda Cipriani.