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Its history spans 110 years. So many have come and gone since Cortina’s Hotel Cristallo first opened its doors in 1901. One of the most celebrated hotels in the world and a building of great historic, as well as touristic significance, the five-star luxury establishment in Cortina d’Ampezzo this year celebrates over a century of great charm, exclusivity, and class of welcome that have all contributed to bringing Cortina d’Ampezzo into the international limelight. It’s an anniversary that the “Jewel” will be toasting by inviting, first and foremost, it’s most loyal guests to come and take a journey back through time to relive the magic of Cortina’s great high-society and elegant occasions and not-to-be missed rituals. Intellectuals, actors and the aristocratic nobility that, from the early nineteen hundreds, began arriving from all over Europe and, in the majestic rooms of the Cristallo Hotel, represented the beginnings of an unrivalled and timeless tradition in tourism on the most enchanted slopes of the Dolomites.
Celebrating the Cristallo Hotel’s 110 years during the next summer season, which starts on July 1, will mean reliving the atmosphere of those times gone by.
- Its large function rooms will be adorned with paintings and period pieces, inspired, for example, by the works of art nouveau chosen by the maestro Gustavo Ghiretti who was commissioned to design the hotel in 1901 by its first owners, Emilia and Giuseppe Menardi. Cortina was, at that time, still a small hillside village over which flew the flag of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One of the hotel's most frequent guests was Lev Tolstoy.
- The celebrations will be rendered even more magical on August 17 with the “5:00 o’clock Tea Dance”, just as it was in the twenties, when the Cristallo Hotel was one of the Italian and international high nobility’s favourite destinations. In fact the hotel’s guest book lists amongst its regular visitors famous name like Prince Humbert of the Royal House of Savoy and Maria Josè, Gabriele D’Annunzio and King Faud of Egypt, all of whom loved staying at the Cristallo Hotel to relax during their holidays.
- On August 21 cocktail presentation of the "Cristallo Platinum Collection" exclusive scarfs created in collaboration with HORO.
- On August 27, in Corso Italia, there will be a Concours d'Elegance of Car Club vintage cars with a parade from the centre of town to the Hotel starting at 7:30 pm
- A Grand Party at which to toast the celebrations, planned for August 27, will look back at the splendours of the past. A truly exclusive occasion at which to raise a glass to the successes of Cortina’s five-star luxury hotel on the occasion of its 110th anniversary. A high-society party, just like in the seventies when, under the management of Rinaldo Menardi, the Cristallo Hotel witnessed the opening of the Monkey Club. Pretty soon it became a favourite haunt of the golden youth of the time as well as members of celebrity Italian and international households. Well known names like Ira Furstenberg and Luca di Montezemolo, as well as some of the best known celebrities from the international jet set like Frank Sinatra and Peter Sellers, star of "The Pink Panther", the 1963 Blake Edwards film. One of the first great films that linked the five-star luxury hotel with the Cinema, the setting for incredible films, was James Bond Agent 007, as were many commercials and TV serials.
- Eras of sparkling successes, both of yesterday and today, a history spanning more than a century that the hotel will recount in a ‘Carnet de Voyage’ that its guests will receive as a gift.
- Cocktail at the "Mario Rimoldi" Museum of Modern Art on August 23, with an exhibition of the original sketches that the architect Gellner drew, as commissioned by leo Menardi.
- Exclusive Crystal Gallery: a collection of exclusive peaces branded Cristallo 110 displayed in the hotel's showcases.
