Italian renaissance in Venice

However many times you visit Venice there is always something new to discover. Adrian Mourby seeks out the latest hotel openings and forthcoming films set in the unique city
1/3
6 February 2013

There are always new reasons to visit Venice. If you love the city — as I do — then part of the pleasure lies in the fact that it is always there when you return, looking just as you left it.

But even Venice changes subtly. This year the big event is the reopening of the Gritti Palace on the Grand Canal. As a hotel, the Gritti always had the air of a building that had been open

for ever, hardly changed since the days when it rented rooms to Ruskin, ­Somerset Maugham and Hemingway. But by the new millennium the place looked in need of a major refurbishment and soon it seemed as though the Gritti had been closed for ever.

Any kind of building work takes ­an age in Venice. Not only does the smallest piece of equipment, nut, bolt or Murano chandelier have to be ferried in by boat and unloaded — without being dropped in the canal — but the builders’ skips have to be taken far out into the lagoon where an island of ­rubble grows as they are unloaded.

The Gritti was built in the 14th century but acquired (and renamed) by the aristocratic Gritti family in 1814. It was turned into a hotel at the end of the 19th century. When the palace reopened last week it no longer looked all of its 700 years. There is a rooftop swimming pool — the first along the Grand Canal —and levels of comfort neither the Gritti family nor their famous literary guests could have dreamed of.

Among those guests was Ernest Hemingway, who lived at the Gritti while carrying on an “affair” (almost entirely in his mind) with a Venetian woman young enough to be his daughter, if not granddaughter. She was 18 and he was 51. Across the River and into the Trees, Hemingway’s novel based on their relationship, was so bad that Papa got stinky reviews for the first time and the girl’s parents stopped her associating with a married man whose deluded fantasies were in danger of making their daughter unmarryable.

It’s not surprising the novel was so bad. Hemingway used to load up with bottles of Valpolicella from Harry’s Bar (where he was a shareholder) before returning to the Gritti to churn out more text. More temperate guests included John Ruskin and his wife Effie Gray, who are the subjects of a new British film premiering in May.

Effie (written by Emma Thompson and starring Dakota Fanning and Greg Wise) tells the story of the Ruskins’ disintegrating marriage as Effie falls in love with Victorian painter John Everett Millais. Exteriors were shot at the Gritti but because of the ongoing refurbishment, interiors were filmed at the Danieli 700 yards away. This 19th- century hotel was also recently the backdrop for Les Enfants du Siècle, a French film in which Juliette Binoche played the 19th-century writer George Sand, who conducted a disastrous love affair in the Danieli.

In 2009 the Danieli made news ­following a sumptuous refurbishment by the flamboyant French architect and interior designer Jacques Garcia, who brought the bedrooms up to the standard of its OTT lobby. Garcia also transformed the modern rooftop restaurant into the most sought-after dining room in Venice by making it resemble a Victorian gentlemen’s club. There is also one wholly new hotel on the Grand Canal, which opened in 2011.

New hotels in Venice are rare as there is no room to build and so any new venture has to be a conversion. The Centurion Palace is just that, a stylish reworking of 19th-century offices constructed in Gothic style on the site of an old Venetian monastery closed down by Napoleon. By a curious coincidence the Centurion stands on the opposite bank from the Gritti.

Unlike the sombre Gritti and the Byzantine splendour of the Danieli, the Centurion is decorated in a florid ­contemporary style by Guido Ciompi. The restaurant (with a new terrace jutting over the Grand Canal) is all white while some of the larger bedrooms have headboards that tower 20 feet overhead. The hotel is hoping to enlarge that terrace as its five tables are always booked up for the evening.

The Centurion stands at the midpoint between Venice’s greatest gallery of modern art, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and Punta della Dogana, the newest exhibition space in the city.

In 2009, Tadao Ando converted an old customs shed behind the church of Santa Maria della Salute to show works from the Francois Pinault Collection. The current exhibition is In Praise of Doubt, which looks at identity via everyday objects — and naked women.

Also out this year is a film about Antonio Vivaldi’s life. Vivaldi tells the story of the “flame-haired priest” (Max Irons) and his love for pupil Cristina (Elle Fanning). Vivaldi was shot a block further down the Riva degli Schiavoni from the Danieli, where the Four Seasons ­composer taught in a school for orphaned girls. The plot has him saving them from being sold off into slavery. As I say, there are always new reasons to look afresh at Venice.

DETAILS: ITALY

Railbookers has three nights at the Centurion Palace from £649pp, including rail travel from St Pancras via

Paris and B&B. railbookers.com, 020 3327 2415. Hotel Danieli, a Luxury Collection hotel, has doubles from £260 room only, luxurycollection.com/danieli.

The Gritti Palace has doubles from £415 B&B, luxurycollection.com/grittipalace

Venice Biennale 2013, June 1- November 24, labiennale.org

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in