Former Excelsior Cinema in Mestre

It was 1911 when Vittorio Furlan and his father Antonio, pioneers of cinema in Italy, opened the Cinema Excelsior in Mestre, a building built between 1911 and 1914.

Vittorio Furlan is one of the pioneers of cinema distribution and exhibition.

In reality, the opening date of the room is uncertain because in a publication of the time we read: on 17-2-1908 the Excelsior was opened in Piazza Umberto.

The owner opens it with an invitation-only evening for one hundred people, who are offered sweets and champagne at the end of the show.

In the early years, the audience was made up of soldiers, but above all ordinary people who arrive in the city on Sunday afternoons, from the suburbs, to watch the projections.

The date of 1911 is, on the other hand, confirmed by an article that appeared in the Gazzettino in 1982 which reports the following sentence: Vittorio Furlan started the film projections in Mestre in 1905 and six years later he built the Excelsior cinema.

An element that would confirm these data emerged during the renovation work that took place in the 1930s. During the works the original floor was touched, formed by tiles that constituted a coordinated motif.

Right in the center is a tile marked 1911.

The price of the ticket varies according to the seat: 1.20 lire for the gallery with velvet armchairs, 1 lira for the first seats with wooden chairs, 70 cents for the second seats with wooden benches, as in the book it remembers "Alla discovery of Mestre "Michele Casarin, Giuseppe Saccà and Giovanni Vio.

The project was by engineer Gandin and the cinema was built by the Guassin company. The cinema developed near the edges of the Marzenego branch, called Orsellino, with a facade with floral motifs and numerous frescoes by Alessandro Pomi.

In the 1930s Giovanni Furlan had a stage built at the Excelsior and had the sides painted by the painter Raffa.

In this room, initially, the three seat orders were: seats with wooden benches, first seats with wooden chairs, gallery with velvet armchairs.

An amusement, that offered by the cinema, that not even the war can stop. "There is an emblematic photo from the 1940s - says Gianantonio Furlan, a member of the family who, for generations, has managed the Excelsior and other historic cinemas in Mestre - It depicts Piazza Ferretto (where the Excelsior cinema is located, ed) struck by a bomb. Next to the crater caused by the explosion, a queue of people lined up to go to the cinema ”.

Meanwhile, the years pass and the Excelsior experiences all the main stages in the history of cinema: the advent of sound, that of color and of television, which causes a drop in spectators, when, with the economic boom, it begins to enter all the homes of Italians.

And then again, just to name a few, the birth of multiplexes and the advent of digital.

With the passage of time the Excelsior loses its enamel and suffers the competition of more modern rooms but, in 1992, thanks to careful restoration work, the room regains its splendor.
As reported by La nuova Venezia: "the executive refinement, the marmorino plaster, the bright colors and the majolica look have returned to shine thanks to the restorer who has restored one of the pages in Mestre to one of the most forgotten and corrupt artistic pages from atmospheric agents and from the years.

In short, the history of Italy and that of a medium, cinema, which has contributed to the socio-cultural evolution of the country, intertwine inside and outside its walls.

The sign on the facade indicated from left to right: Excelsior-Cinema-Concerto.

It was, and still is today, one of the most beautiful commercial buildings in Mestre.

An Art Nouveau building that has resisted, at least in the external part, intact to this day, in fact the Excelsior had been transformed into a multiplex (it has 3 rooms) and beautiful, perhaps thanks to the beauty of its architecture, still stands out, as for the presence of spectators, on the other cinemas in the city.

Now it is closed and it is not yet known that it will have one of the oldest cinemas in Italy and the historic Liberty lights are being restored, the entrepreneur owner of Img Cinemas is trying to sell the 1911 property.

ABSURD this declaration of the property: "We are looking for buyers to turn it into a shopping mall."

Map: Former Excelsior Cinema in Mestre