The Gritti Palace

The Gritti Palace stands on the Grand Canal at Campo Santa Maria del Giglio, facing the dome of Santa Maria della Salute. The Pisani family built it in Venetian Gothic style in 1475; fifty years later it passed to Andrea Gritti, Doge of Venice, whose name it has carried since. It became a hotel in 1895 and was bought in 1947 by the Compagnia Italiana Grandi Alberghi, the group from which The Luxury Collection traces its roots. A complete restoration, finished in 2013, set the 61 rooms and 21 suites in their current form, each furnished individually with antiques, Murano glass and, in the upper suites, some of the widest canal views in Venice. Ground-floor life runs between three rooms. Club del Doge, the restaurant, opens onto a floating terrace on the canal; Bar Longhi keeps its baroque woodwork and its Pietro Longhi paintings on the walls; and the Riva Lounge, built with the Riva boatyard, lays teak decking and chrome-topped tables at the water's edge, with an Aquariva moored at the dock. Upstairs, the Explorer's Library holds a Titian portrait of Doge Andrea Gritti, bought at Sotheby's in 2016, and the Gritti Spa operates as one of Sisley Paris's few hotel outposts in Italy.