The high-society restaurant next to the “La Fenice” opera house, this was once the café for the theatres, of which there were another four nearby. The Risorgimento swept through in 1848, when Niccolò Tommaseo and Daniele Manin were carried here on the shoulders of patriots who had freed them from Austrian prison. Named the “Martini” in 1863, it was the haunt of the playwrights Gallina, Praga, and Giacosa, as well as of journalists and all the beau monde. A piano bar in 1927, it was requisitioned by the Americans during the war. Since 1952, it has been one of the most elegant restaurants in Venice, much loved by Rubinstein, Laurence Olivier, Stravinsky, Cocteau and Chaplin.