Harry's Bar

The most famous bar in Venice was bankrolled by a drunk American. In the late 1920s, Harry Pickering, a wealthy young Bostonian, was drinking his way through Venice when his family cut him off financially. Giuseppe Cipriani, the bartender at the Hotel Europa, lent him 10,000 lire out of his own pocket. Two years later, Pickering walked back in and handed Cipriani 50,000 lire — his original 10,000 back, plus 40,000 to open a bar. Harry's Bar opened on May 13, 1931, and the rest is cocktail history.

Cipriani invented the Bellini here in 1948 — fresh white peach purée mixed with Prosecco, named after the 15th-century Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini because the cocktail's pink hue reminded Cipriani of a colour in one of Bellini's paintings. He also invented carpaccio — thin slices of raw beef drizzled with a creamy sauce — naming it after the painter Vittore Carpaccio, whose use of red and white reminded him of the dish. Venice: where even the food is named after artists.

Ernest Hemingway made Harry's his de facto office during his Venice years. His corner table became so associated with him that it might as well have had a nameplate. He drank Montgomery martinis here — fifteen parts gin to one part vermouth, named after the Field Marshal because Montgomery supposedly wouldn't attack unless he had a 15-to-1 advantage. Hemingway set his novel "Across the River and Into the Trees" partly at the bar.

The Italian Ministry of Cultural Affairs declared Harry's Bar a national landmark in 2001. The prices are astronomical, the portions are small, and the room is surprisingly modest — just a ground-floor space with white-clothed tables. But you're not paying for the food. You're paying for the ghosts.