Harry's Bar: where "everything remains the same
It is strange to imagine Naomi Campbell dedicating a few kind words to something or someone. Well, Harry's Bar is one of the lucky few that deserves the congratulations of the ebony goddess: “If you travel to Venice and do not visit the place, it is as if you had not been in Venice” , says the model, in one of those lapidary phrases that she likes to use so much in the world of fashion.
Harry's Bar is the new black , or rather it is the usual black, infallible and irreplaceable . The Lido, on a separate island away from the permanent turmoil that exists in the historic center of the city, has been attracting movie stars for decades thanks to its festival, which celebrates a new edition every September. But it is this mythical place that took them to the vicinity of the always crowded Plaza de San Marcos. It is since then a microcosm with the best of the place.
Guiseppe Cipriani's Passion
Giuseppe Cipriani , a bartender at the Europa Hotel from a humble family in nearby Verona, he opened this small establishment in the 50's and in a short time it became essential in the social life of Venice. There he walked Peggy Guggenheim with fifteen of her Pekingese dogs and one of her greatest admirers was Ernest Hemingway , who could well have written a guide to bars throughout Europe. In fact the waiters pride themselves on spotting visiting writers , usually, they say, are guys with beards and Moleskine notebooks. That is why Giuseppe Cipriani Jr, heir to the small hospitality empire, enjoys seeing that within its four walls all the languages of the planet are spoken.
Crossing his threshold is to enter the legend, they like to sell those responsible. He was followed by others with the same brand value: Harry's Dolci -on the also remote Venetian island of Giudecca-, resorts, nightclubs and restaurants located in the most luxurious enclaves in the world.
Carlota Cerquetti is the director of this project
Among the secrets of Harry's Bar are its complex simplicity and its skillful formula to awaken within us the erotics of power in all possible areas : from Winston Churchill to Orson Welles or Mary Callas They sat their buttocks on their leather seats. Even Naomi Campbell herself acknowledges that she was the one who felt intimidated among so many celebrities and big shots on her first visits. “ It is one of the few bars in the world where you look curiously at who is dining at the table next to you. , like someone who goes to the theater ”, says one of her regulars before Cerquetti's camera.
Why not Guiseppe's Bar then? The bar owes its name to the American millionaire who put all the money for the Italian to set up his own business, Harry Pickering . It was a gesture of gratitude from this regular customer of the Hotel Europe . When the young bartender discovered that the family of one of his most loyal customers had turned off his tap after discovering his excessive liking for alcohol, Cipriani , moved by that type of camaraderie that is forged in the bars of a bar, lent him several thousand lire. Years later and with his financial situation on the rise again, Pickering he returned to Venice with an offer for his friend that he could not refuse.
Two essentials of his menu are the carpaccio , for being the place where it was invented and the bellini cocktail , also created by Cipriani when he mixed 1/3 peach juice with 2/3 prosecco in a cocktail. For neither of them time passes, as for so many other things in the bar. “People change and the world changes, but in here everything remains the same” says Arrigo, the founder's son.
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Harry's Bar: the corner of legends