Hotel Cipriani, A Belmond Hotel

The launch that carries guests across from St Mark's takes about five minutes, and the moment of stepping off it onto the Giudecca is the point of Hotel Cipriani, A Belmond Hotel. Venice is a few hundred metres away across the water, close enough to read the clock on the Campanile, and yet the hotel sits in three acres of garden on the quietest island of the city.

History

Giuseppe Cipriani, the founder of Harry's Bar, opened the hotel in 1958. He had the land but not the capital, and the money came from the Guinness family, who were regular customers at the bar. The hotel started small, with a single low building and the pool, and grew by acquiring its neighbours. The 15th-century Palazzo Vendramin and the Palazzetto, two buildings on the lagoon side with their own entrance, were added as annexes and give the hotel views straight onto the Doge's Palace.

Orient-Express Hotels bought the property in 1976. The company was renamed Belmond in 2014, and LVMH acquired Belmond in 2019. The hotel has carried the Belmond name since the rebranding, and the Cipriani family has no connection with it beyond the name.

Architecture and design

Nothing about the main building is grand. It is a long, low block in pale render with shutters and terraces, built to look at the lagoon rather than to be looked at. The garden does the work. A lawn runs to the water, and the Casanova garden behind the pool holds a small vineyard and an old wall against which the hotel grows its own produce. The Palazzo Vendramin is the exception, a proper Venetian palazzo with Gothic windows and a private courtyard, reached from the main hotel by a covered walkway.

Rooms and suites

The rooms in the main building open onto the garden, the pool or the lagoon towards the Lido. Those in the Palazzo Vendramin and the Palazzetto look across the Giudecca canal to St Mark's and are the ones regular guests ask for by number. Fabrics are Venetian: Fortuny prints, Murano glass on the lamps, terrazzo floors in the bathrooms. Several suites on the upper floors have their own terraces.

Dining

Oro, the main restaurant, holds a Michelin star and occupies the lagoon-facing dining room with a terrace along the water. Cip's Club sits on a wooden deck built out over the canal, with the whole of the Riva degli Schiavoni as its backdrop, and serves the Venetian classics the Cipriani name is attached to. The Gabbiano bar beside the pool runs through the afternoon. Breakfast is on the terrace whenever the weather allows.

Wellness

The pool is the thing. Built in 1958 to Olympic dimensions and filled with filtered seawater, it is heated and surrounded by lawn, and it is the only pool of its size in Venice. The spa, run under the Dior name since 2023, has treatment rooms opening onto the garden. There is a tennis court behind the Casanova garden, a rarity in a city with no flat open ground.

Weddings and events

Weddings take place on the lawn facing the lagoon, in the Casanova garden, or inside the Palazzo Vendramin for smaller groups. The hotel quotes a maximum of around 300 guests for its largest reception format. Arrivals by boat are the norm, with the hotel's launches shuttling guests across from San Marco. Because the hotel closes in winter, the season runs from spring to the start of November.

Location

The address is Giudecca 10, at the eastern end of the island beside the church of the Zitelle. The hotel launch leaves from a pontoon in front of the Hotel Danieli on the Riva degli Schiavoni and runs around the clock for guests. Marco Polo airport is reached by water taxi in about 40 minutes, or by the Alilaguna boat service. Venezia Santa Lucia station is a 30-minute water-taxi ride, and the Zitelle vaporetto stop is beside the hotel gate. Among luxury hotels in Venice, this is the only one with its own gardens and pool on the water, and the hotel's shuttle is the reason the Giudecca address has never counted against it.