The Gritti Palace

A 5-star of 82 rooms, by the count of the MICHELIN Guide and Tripadvisor, in a palazzo the Pisani family rebuilt in its present Gothic form in 1475 and which from 1525 was the residence of Doge Andrea Gritti. It has been a hotel since 1895, says the official page, and belongs to Marriott’s Luxury Collection.

It reopened in 2013 after a 15-month restoration costing 35 million euros, according to the reopening announcement. Among its 2025 awards the site lists 2 MICHELIN Keys and 4 stars from Forbes Travel Guide. The number of rooms is not printed on the official pages we read.

12 categories, on the official rooms page, each with one double bed and for 2 guests at most. The rooms: Deluxe from 25 to 38 m², Venetian from 26 to 40 with a queen bed, Giglio Prestige from 30 to 57 on the campo, Landmark Grand Canal from 29 to 41 on the canal. The suites: Sestiere from 38 to 59 m² and Serenissima from 53 to 79.

The 10 Signature Suites fall into 6 categories: Heritage from 80 to 111 m², Patron from 67 to 82, Royal at 81, Redentore at 76 with its 250 m² terrace, Palazzo Canal and Presidential at 92. The site warns that sizes are approximate, and within one category the largest room can be nearly twice the smallest.

At Campo Santa Maria del Giglio 2467, in the San Marco district, on the bank of the Grand Canal opposite the Salute basilica and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, as the official page describes it. The campo lies on the way from St Mark’s to the Accademia; the shopping streets between Rialto and St Mark’s, the site says, begin 100 metres off.

Google scores the neighbourhood 4.4 out of 5, with 5 for transport and 3.9 for restaurants, and calls it always crowded. One Booking.com guest notes that the hotel is close to everything without sitting in the most touristy part of San Marco.

On foot, computed on OpenStreetMap’s paths on 8 October 2026: 8 minutes and 648 metres to St Mark’s Square, 9 to the basilica, 4 minutes and 352 metres to Teatro La Fenice, 13 minutes and 1,126 metres to the Rialto Bridge, 7 to the Accademia Bridge and 11 to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

The Salute, which looks a step away from the terrace, is 14 minutes on foot because you must cross the Accademia Bridge; by vaporetto it is the next stop. Booking.com gives 500 metres to St Mark’s and 400 to the vaporetto stop: the actual route is 648 metres to the square and 184 to the landing stage.

The most direct way is a water taxi, which lands at the hotel’s own pier: you take one at the airport, Piazzale Roma, the station or the port and pay the driver, with no booking, says the arrival guide. The hotel also sells a private transfer with a hostess and porter: €380 from the airport via the boat dock, €330 via Piazzale Roma, €270 from the station or the cruise terminals, €550 from Treviso, for 4 people and 2 bags at most.

By public transport: from the airport, Alilaguna’s Orange Line, €18 and about 90 minutes; from Piazzale Roma and the station, vaporetto line 1, €9.50. You get off at Santa Maria del Giglio, 2 minutes from the door. For wheelchair users the guide offers, on request, launches with a mobile platform.

At Piazzale Roma, where Venice’s roads end: the hotel is on a car-free island and has no car park. The official site names Garage San Marco and a valet service at €75 a day, adding that neither is run by the hotel; the arrival guide refers drivers to the International Limousine Service agency, open daily from 8am to 8pm, with an after-hours service on request.

The paid valet that Google Hotels lists costs €75 a day and is not run by the hotel, according to Marriott’s page for the hotel, read on 15 October 2026, and the car stays at Piazzale Roma, which the site puts at 1 km and which is 1,983 metres away on foot.

Not from the hotel: it faces the Grand Canal, with no beach and nowhere to bathe. The experiences page places the Lido beach 3 km away, reached by boat, and the Venice Golf Club at Alberoni 35 minutes off by water taxi.

The lagoon is for the hotel’s Riva: a half day around Murano, Burano and Torcello, or along the Lido to watch traditional fishing.

No. A pool appears nowhere among the amenities on the official pages, nor on the Google Hotels card. The hotel’s one pool is private: it sits on the terrace of the Redentore Suite, which the room sheet lists with a «plunge pool» and a whirlpool for 4.

For a swim the site suggests the Lido beach, 3 km away; the Venetian hotels with a proper pool are on the Giudecca and the Lido.

The site does not say: it publishes neither a temperature nor a season for the pool on the terrace. The events page calls it a «mini pool» and describes the terrace with sun loungers and white Istrian stone, reached from the lobby by a private lift or from the suite by the spiral stair.

That terrace is also hired out for receptions of up to 80 standing or 40 seated, by the capacity chart.

At Club del Doge, the restaurant on the canal: breakfast from 7.30am to 11am, lunch from 12.30pm to 4pm, dinner from 7pm to 10.30pm, all year, and open to non-residents. The Gritti Terrace serves lunch from April to October; Bar Longhi and the Riva Lounge run from 11am to 1am, with the bar kitchen from noon to 11pm. Room service is on 24 hours a day.

On the published menu the «In Essence» tasting is €205 a head, for 2 or more, with a pairing of 5 glasses at €115; à la carte, caviar aside, starters run from €42 to €60, pasta and risotto from €45 to €85, mains from €41 to €115. At the bar the club sandwich and the cheeseburger are €40. For Club del Doge, Marriott’s site asks for formal dress.

Not as a rule: the official dining page says breakfast is served at Club del Doge «for a fee», and Expedia lists it as a surcharge. It comes with rates that include it and among the benefits of some Marriott Bonvoy tiers, as a guest of April 2026 reports.

The price is not on the published menu. Guests report it like this: €53–55 a head on Google in May 2026, €110 for 2 for the full breakfast in a Tripadvisor review that Google quotes. It is served from 7.30am to 11am, buffet and à la carte, with the vegan choices a guest of March 2026 was glad of.

Small and private: the Gritti SPA by Sisley Paris has 3 treatment suites, 2 of them doubles for couples with their own steam shower, and an aromatic Turkish bath with chromatic waterfall showers. The materials are Venetian: Murano glass, Orsoni gold-leaf mosaic, wengé wood and marble.

The site publishes no floor area. Its list of facilities has the steam room and a foot bath; there is no sauna, pool or plunge bath. The gym has cardio machines, free weights and a Kinesis, with a personal trainer on request.

What the stay includes is the gym, open 24 hours and reserved for hotel guests, according to the experiences page. The spa works by appointment only and treatments are charged; the site does not say that use of the Turkish bath comes with the room.

No day pass for non-residents is published: the page offers gift vouchers for treatments and, for those who book them, half-day or full-day programmes in the double suites. There is no online booking; the number is +39 041 794888.

From November to April: Monday to Friday 2pm to 8pm, Saturday noon to 8pm, Sunday 11am to 7pm. From May to October: Monday to Saturday noon to 8pm, Sunday 11am to 7pm, as the spa page gives them. The last treatment begins an hour before closing.

Entry is from the age of 14, and under-18s need a parent’s written consent. The spa asks guests to arrive 15 minutes early and to cancel 24 hours ahead, or the treatment is charged in full.

The menu on the official page is built on Sisley’s phyto-aromatic treatments: 50-minute facials, among them hydrating, radiance and purifying, 80-minute anti-ageing facials, and body treatments of 50 or 80 minutes. Then massages, for couples, Swedish, deep-tissue and lymphatic drainage, and foot reflexology of 25 or 50 minutes.

There are manicures, pedicures, waxing and 2 facial rituals for men. The site gives durations and no prices. One of the short massages is a 25-minute leg treatment, meant for the evening after a day of bridges.

Yes, with some planning. The official site offers babysitting and sets 18 as the minimum age to check in; the room sheets, though, fix occupancy at 2 and state that rollaway beds and cots are not permitted. Booking.com lists a cot on request and no extra beds, with children from 3 counted as adults; Expedia speaks of free cots.

In practice a family books 2 rooms or asks about a cot beforehand. The spa is for over-14s; the tourist tax is waived up to the age of 10.

Yes: one dog or cat of up to 6 kg per room, at no charge, with a bowl and a bed from the hotel, according to the official page. Outside the room it must be on a lead and may not enter the meeting rooms, restaurant or bars; any damage is the guest’s to pay.

The MICHELIN Guide says instead that pets are allowed «on request» and that charges may apply: the hotel’s own rule, which sets none, is the one to go by.

The restaurant, the terrace, 2 bars, The Gritti Epicurean School, the spa, the gym, the Explorer’s Library with the palazzo’s art collection, a boutique and 7 event rooms. The concierge desk, staffed by Clefs d’Or members, is open 24 hours.

Activities on the experiences page include outings on the Riva, 30-minute talks on gondolas, acqua alta, Burano lace and the Bellini, visits to craft workshops and helicopter flights over the lagoon. Wi-Fi is free, with more bandwidth in suites; the hotel has a cash machine and a business centre.

The clearest is «Your Suite Escape», on the suites page: 2 nights or more in a suite bring a hotel credit of €200 per suite per stay. A Signature Suite booked at a flexible rate comes with check-in in the suite, a bottle of Champagne, the minibar and pressing included, a coffee machine and a farewell gift.

The rest are Marriott’s terms: the member rate for Bonvoy, free to join when booking, and stays paid in points, which several guests say they used here.

Yes: the events page offers the Gritti Terrace on the water, the Redentore Suite’s roof terrace and the Salone Gritti, 120 m² under Murano chandeliers, for banquets of up to 80. The Club del Doge terrace takes 100 standing; the Sala Pisani seats 30 for dinner.

The hotel arranges flowers, menus, the cake, a photographer, music, gondolas for the procession and guests’ transfers, and can be taken over whole. Prices and packages are not published. The page gives 738 m² of event space in all; for the roof terrace it says 250 m² in the text and 280 in the capacity chart.

On 8 October 2026 the restaurant’s site had not yet published a menu for 31 December: the only gala evening announced was the Redentore, on 18 July. Club del Doge is in any case open all year, 7 days a week, with dinner from 7pm to 10.30pm.

That the hotel is open that night is confirmed by Google Hotels, which showed rooms on sale for 31 December 2026. The hotel’s events calendar could not be opened on the day we read.

No priced package, but an arrangement: the Venice Golf Club at Alberoni, at the far end of the Lido, is affiliated with the hotel, and guests get preferred rates and tee times, according to the experiences page. It has 18 holes, par 72, 8 km and 35 minutes away by water taxi; carts and clubs are hired separately.

All year. On Google Hotels, read on 8 October 2026, 113 of the 115 nights between 9 October 2026 and 31 January 2027 had a price; for 9 and 10 October there were none.

What is seasonal is the Gritti Terrace and Club del Doge’s outdoor room, from April to October, and the spa’s shorter hours from November to April. Acqua alta, the site explains, is more frequent in autumn and winter, when raised walkways go up along the main streets.

Google Hotels, read on 8 October 2026, for 2 adults and one night, taxes and fees included: €5,302 on 13 October 2026, €2,007 on 22 October, €1,178 on 10 November, €1,448 on Saturday 14 November and Saturday 12 December, €1,626 on 25 December, €2,526 on 31 December and €1,040 on 12 January 2027.

Each is the lowest price among the sellers, with no room named; on the official site the same October, November and New Year’s Eve nights cost €2 to €8 more. From November to January weekdays barely move and weekends rise; the mid-October peak is the highest of the 3 months read.

On 8 October 2026 Google showed 4.6/5 from 1,384 ratings, 83% of them 5-star. On 7 October Tripadvisor gave 4.8/5 from 2,008, ranked 44th of 381 hotels in Venice, with 5.0 for location and 4.3 for value; Booking.com 9.5/10 from 159, Expedia 9.4/10 from 251.

What recurs is staff who remember names and occasions, breakfast on the canal, and the concierge. For those not staying in the hotel a table at the bar or on the terrace is not guaranteed; in October 2023 a customer noted €9 for an espresso and €27 for a spritz.

The Google Hotels figures already contain them: for 10 November the Booking.com link carried €1,180.00 in all, €116.38 of it tax, a sum that matches 10% VAT plus €10 of tourist tax for 2. On the hotel’s site the tourist tax is €5 per person per night, €3.50 in January, for 5 consecutive nights at most, settled at check-out; children up to 10 are exempt and those of 11 to 16 pay half. For 12 January, though, the Booking.com link still counts €10.

The access fee the city charges day visitors on certain days does not apply to hotel guests, who may be asked to show their exemption. Night transfers cost 20% more, and each bag beyond the second €30.

Check-in from 3pm and check-out by noon, according to the official page; Expedia adds that arrivals are taken until midnight. Guests must be 18 to check in.

A late check-out depends on availability: a guest of October 2026 was given one and spent nearly 2 days in the hotel on a single night’s stay. The whole property is non-smoking.