Aman Venice

The water entrance of Palazzo Papadopoli opens straight off the Grand Canal in the San Polo district of Venice, a few bends upstream from the Rialto bridge. Since 2013 the palazzo has been Aman Venice, the group's only hotel in Italy for its first decade and still one of only a handful of palaces on the canal with a garden of its own.

History

The palazzo was built in the 1560s for the Coccina family, merchants from Bergamo, to a design attributed to Giangiacomo dei Grigi. It passed to the Tiepolo family in the eighteenth century and then, in 1864, to the Papadopoli, a banking family of Greek origin who gave it their name and commissioned the lavish nineteenth-century redecoration of the piano nobile by Michelangelo Guggenheim. The Arrivabene family, descendants of the Papadopoli, still own the building and live on its upper floor. Aman took the lease, restored the interiors and opened the hotel in June 2013 under the name Aman Canal Grande Venice; the name was shortened later. In September 2014 George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin held their wedding here, and the Grand Canal filled with press boats.

Architecture and design

The exterior is Renaissance, with a double row of arched windows on the canal facade. Inside, the piano nobile keeps its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century decoration: ceilings painted by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in the Red Room and the Yellow Room, gilded stuccowork, Murano chandeliers, silk wall hangings and a ballroom with a painted ceiling. Jean-Michel Gathy of Denniston was responsible for the hotel conversion and chose to leave the salons almost untouched, inserting plain modern furniture and leaving the historic rooms as the public spaces. The two gardens, one on the canal and one behind the house, are rare in Venice and belong to the hotel.

Rooms and suites

There are 24 rooms and suites across the palazzo. Those on the piano nobile and the floor above include the signature suites decorated with original frescoes and stucco; the Alcova Tiepolo Suite has a Tiepolo ceiling above the bed. Rooms on the upper floors are simpler and some look over the rooftops of San Polo rather than the canal. The bathrooms were rebuilt in marble during the conversion.

Dining

The restaurant occupies the Yellow Room and the Red Room on the piano nobile, and in the warmer months tables are set in the canal garden. The cooking is Italian and Venetian. The bar serves on the garden terrace and in the salons, and the hotel takes the rare step in Venice of serving breakfast outdoors beside the water when the weather allows.

Wellness

A small Aman Spa was fitted into the palazzo with treatment rooms and a steam room. There is no pool, which is the rule rather than the exception in the historic centre of Venice.

Weddings and events

The ballroom, the Tiepolo salons and the gardens are used for weddings, private dinners and small meetings, and the whole palazzo can be taken over, as the Clooney wedding did. The hotel does not publish fixed capacities for these rooms; the ballroom is the largest. Civil ceremonies in Venice take place at Ca' Farsetti, the town hall on the canal, and couples return to the hotel for the reception.

Location

The palazzo stands on the Grand Canal in San Polo, between the Rialto and the Ca' Foscari bend, with the water gate as the main entrance and a land entrance from the lanes behind. The San Silvestro vaporetto stop is beside it, the Rialto market is a few minutes away on foot and St Mark's Square about fifteen. Venice Marco Polo airport is reached by water taxi in about half an hour, and Santa Lucia railway station by boat in ten minutes. Few luxury hotels in Venice stand directly on the canal with their own gardens, and the view from the garden takes in the water traffic of the whole city.