History

The Lido di Venezia began its transformation into one of Europe’s most fashionable seaside resorts in the final decades of the nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, the island’s Gran Viale Santa Maria Elisabetta had become a showcase boulevard, lined with grand hotels and Liberty villas catering to an international clientele that arrived each summer by vaporetto from Venice.

The building that would become the Grande Albergo Ausonia & Hungaria was inaugurated in 1907, commissioned by Ludovico Fabrizio, a businessman from Friuli. The project was entrusted to architect Nicolò Piamonte, who raised a two-storey Liberty structure on the Gran Viale in what contemporaries described as a remarkably swift construction. The hotel opened under the name Hungaria Palace Hotel, its identity linked to the Austro-Hungarian cultural sphere that dominated much of the Adriatic coast at the time.

The building’s defining transformation came in 1913, when the ceramist Luigi Fabris — a native of Bassano del Grappa and among the most accomplished practitioners of applied ceramic art in the Veneto — undertook the complete covering of the north-east facade facing the boulevard. Working with his workshop, Fabris applied roughly 800 square metres of polychrome majolica tiles, arranged in horizontal registers of increasing decorative complexity towards the upper storeys. The palette of ochres, water-greens, and cream whites brought the facade to vivid life: garlands of fruit and flowers wound between bas-relief female figures representing Venice and Hungary, while gilded putti populated the upper zones.

The hotel closed during the First World War. When it reopened in 1920, the name “Hungaria” — too closely associated with Austria-Hungary, the defeated empire — was joined by “Ausonia,” the poetic Latin name for Italy, yielding the double identity that the hotel has carried ever since. The interwar years brought a glamorous second chapter: the 1920s saw the hotel host the “Follies Dancing” club and a clientele drawn by the Venice Film Festival, which was established nearby in 1932.

The Second World War left its mark on the facade: retreating German forces in April 1945 used the life-size female figures near the roofline for target practice. Some damage from that episode is still visible on close inspection. A major restoration was completed in 2011. In 2018 the English artist Joe Tilson added a contemporary counterpoint by covering the south-east facade with 3,358 hand-made Murano glass tiles, extending the building’s dialogue between Venetian craft traditions and international art.