We consider the Voronoi tessellation based on a homogeneous Poisson point process in an Euclidean space. For a geometric characteristic of the cells (e.g., the inradius, the circumradius, the volume), we investigate the point process of the nuclei of the cells with large values. Conditions are obtained for the convergence in distribution of this point process of exceedances to a homogeneous compound Poisson point process. We provide a characterization of the asymptotic cluster size distribution which is based on the Palm version of the point process of exceedances. This characterization allows us to compute efficiently the values of the extremal index and the cluster size probabilities by simulation for various geometric characteristics. The extension to the Poisson–Delaunay tessellation is also discussed.