Lido (swimming pool)
term mainly used in Britain for an outdoor public swimming pool
In British English, a lido ( LEE-doh, LY-doh) is a public outdoor swimming pool and surrounding facilities, or part of a beach where people can swim, lie in the sun, or participate in water sports. On a cruise ship or ocean liner, the lido deck features outdoor pools and related facilities.
The term probably made its way into English via "Lansbury's Lido", a nickname used in the British press for London's Serpentine bathing place. The bathing place was revamped in 1930 as a project of the Labour First Commissioner for Works, George Lansbury. The re-opening garnered significant press attention as a result of Lansbury's introduction of "mixed" bathing. A plaque to Lansbury was commissioned in the 1950s and still appeared on the Serpentine pavilion as of September 2023.
Lido, an Italian word for "beach", forms part of the place names of several Italian seaside towns known for their beaches, such as Lido di Venezia, the barrier beach enclosing the Venetian Lagoon. Like the Lido di Venezia, the Serpentine "Lido" includes an extended area of shoreline.
See also
History of lidos in the United Kingdom
List of long course swimming pools in the United Kingdom
References
Notes
Sources
Smith, Janet (2006). Liquid assets: the lidos and open air swimming pools of Britain.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1757063. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1930, 2023 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lido (swimming pool)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.