Like every year, delegates and guests at the Venice Film Festival flocked to Harry's Bar, the Cipriani family's venerable establishment a stone's throw from St Mark's Square on the Grand Canal. The ultra-luxury Venetian bar-restaurant, which celebrates its centenary in a few years' time, is at the heart of a network that the family started building in 1931, now consisting of close to 25 Cipriani and Harry Dolci restaurants.
The founder's son, Arrigo Cipriani, now 92, has gradually handed over the

