Palazzo del Cinema
Lungomare Guglielmo Marconi,
30126 Lido VE – Italy

The NPL Meeting, the most important conference in Italy on NPLs, will be held in Venice as usual but, this year, it will be hosted in an extraordinary location: the Palazzo del Cinema in Venice Lido, both the island and the actual venue the Venice Film Festival takes place in every year.

Venice Lido is reachable by boat from Marco Polo airport, Santa Lucia train station and Tronchetto parking. There will be some boats available to transfer NPL Meeting guests from one of these points of arrival to Venice Lido on September 27 (about 40 minutes’ boat ride).

We recommend guests that are attending or leading workshops on September 27 arrive in Venice Lido on time, at 1:30pm CET. There are trains from Milan and flights from London arriving at about 12pm in Venice; further information about boat transfers will be available a few weeks before the event and will also be sent via email to the registered participants.

The Palazzo del Cinema

The Palazzo del Cinema in Lido di Venezia is the main headquarters for the Venice International Film Festival. Built in record time in the Modernist style of the time, it was inaugurated on August 10th 1937 for the fifth edition of the Festival. Featuring a hall and a 1000-seat screening room, the Palazzo del Cinema is a synthesis of Rationalist models. What remains of the original building are the two rounded sides and the lateral façades. With the growing popularity of the Venice Film Festival, which in the early 1950s counted more than one hundred thousand spectators, it became necessary to expand the building. The project was entrusted to the engineer Luigi Quagliata who developed an ambitious design for a five-story building with theatres that could seat 5.000. The Sala Grande was expanded to seat 2.300 spectators; the project also included an open-air arena, office space and services, and a roof garden with a panoramic view of Venice and Lido. This ambitious project was never completed for lack of funds: all that was built was the outdoor Arena in 1952 and a small annex on the main façade of the 1937 building known as the Avancorpo, which served to expand the Foyer of the Sala Grande and create an area for offices and services. The Foyer was later reduced to fit the new Sala Volpi screening room and provides both office space and a ticket office.