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Eiscafé Venezia

The terrace of the Eiscafé Venezia on the Theaterplatz: cream parasols with the café's name, orange bistro chairs, well-filled tables and flower tubs, the Dingelstedtstraße street sign at the corner

The Venezia's terrace on the Theaterplatz, on a late-summer afternoon.

The Venezia's terrace on the Theaterplatz, on a late-summer afternoon.(Weimar Web)
The front of the Eiscafé Venezia: open folding doors, the name in gold above the windows, the ice-cream counter and sundae menu inside, guests at the counter

At the counter of the Venezia.

At the counter of the Venezia.(Weimar Web)

Contact & Visit

Address

Theaterplatz 1
99423 Weimar

About Eiscafé Venezia

Eiscafé Venezia is one of the most popular gelaterias in Weimar and a fixed point of the town's summer: its terrace on the Theaterplatz fills from the first warm afternoons. The house goes back to 1993, when Giovanni Scarselli opened it as Weimar's first Italian gelateria, and it has held its corner of the square since 2006.[1]

Weimar's first gelateria, 1993–2006

Giovanni Scarselli opened the Venezia in 1993 as the first Italian gelateria in Weimar, on the corner of Hummelstraße and Schützengasse, where it quickly made a name for itself; in 2006 he moved the café to the Theaterplatz.[1] He had first come to Weimar in 1983 — drawn, as he told it, by Goethe's Faust and the young Werther — fell in love here, married two years later, and returned with his wife right after the Wall came down. Weimar, in his own words, was his home: small but cosmopolitan.[1]

The house since 2017

Giovanni Cancian and Ivo Sbardella took the café over in 2017, with a team whose longest-serving members had been part of the Venezia for decades.[1] Scarselli, who had sold the house after his wife's early death and gone back to Italy, died there in 2019 at seventy-four — his Venezia on the square remains.

Questions visitors ask

How long has the Eiscafé Venezia existed?
Since 1993, when Giovanni Scarselli opened it as Weimar's first Italian gelateria; it moved to the Theaterplatz in 2006.[1]
Who runs it today?
Giovanni Cancian and Ivo Sbardella, who took the café over in 2017.[1]

Sources

  1. In Weimar war sein Zuhause — Thüringer Allgemeine, retrieved 31 August 2026

Interesting reads

Historical figures

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1749–1832writer • statesman • naturalist

Friedrich Schiller

1759–1805writer • poet • historian

Duchess Anna Amalia

1739–1807duchess • regent • patron • composer

Walter Gropius

1883–1969architect • founder and director of the Bauhaus • teacher

Historic sites

Frauenplan 1, 99423 Weimar

Platz der Demokratie 1, 99423 Weimar

Stéphane-Hessel-Platz 1, 99423 Weimar

Buchenwald, 99427 Weimar