The St. Regis Venice

Claude Monet spent the autumn of 1908 in Venice and painted the Grand Canal, San Giorgio Maggiore and the Doge's Palace from the Hotel Britannia, where he stayed with his wife Alice. The Britannia later became part of the Hotel Europa & Regina, and since 2019 the palazzi on that stretch of the Grand Canal have been The St. Regis Venice, in the San Marco district, with Santa Maria della Salute across the water.

History

The Hotel Britannia opened on the Grand Canal in 1895, in a group of Gothic and Renaissance palazzi a few hundred metres from Piazza San Marco. In the 20th century it was joined with the Hotel Regina next door and run as the Europa & Regina, first under CIGA, the Venetian hotel company, and then under Starwood as a Westin. Marriott, which absorbed Starwood in 2016, closed the hotel for a restoration and reopened it in 2019 under the St. Regis name, the brand founded by John Jacob Astor IV in New York in 1904.

Architecture and design

The hotel joins five palazzi of different dates, among them the Palazzo Tiepolo, with the Grand Canal in front and the Calle Larga XXII Marzo behind. The restoration kept the Gothic windows and the canal-side façades and gave the interiors the colours of the lagoon, with glass, pale wood and contemporary art in the public rooms. The garden on the Grand Canal, with its terrace at the water, is one of the few in the city, and most of Venice's hotels have no outdoor space at all.

Rooms and suites

There are 169 rooms and suites across the palazzi, a large number of them on the canal, with the Salute, the Punta della Dogana or San Giorgio in the window. The top suites have terraces on the water. Butler service follows the St. Regis custom begun in New York. The landing stage on the canal is the main entrance for anyone arriving by water, and the street door on the calle is the other.

Dining

Gio's Restaurant & Terrace serves Venetian and Italian cooking with tables on the garden terrace at the water's edge. The St. Regis Bar keeps the brand's Bloody Mary ritual, which began at the King Cole Bar of the St. Regis New York in 1934, and serves its Venetian version. The Arts Bar builds cocktails around works of art and is the quieter room of the two.

Weddings and events

The hotel has meeting rooms and a ballroom, with the canal-side garden and terrace for receptions. Weddings arrive by water taxi at the hotel's own landing stage and are held in the garden or inside, with the Salute as the view. Company events use the same rooms through the year, since the hotel does not close in winter.

Location

The hotel is in San Marco, on the Grand Canal between the Santa Maria del Giglio vaporetto stop and Piazza San Marco, which is five minutes' walk. The Calle Larga XXII Marzo, the street of the fashion houses, runs behind it. Water taxis from Marco Polo airport reach the hotel's landing in about 40 minutes, and from Santa Lucia station in about 15. The Accademia bridge and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection are across the canal, and the Gritti Palace, the Bauer and the Monaco are its neighbours on the same bank, which makes this stretch of the canal the hotel quarter of San Marco. As a luxury hotel in Venice its advantage is the view: the Salute and the Dogana from the garden, with nothing between.