Checking-In To: The Gritti Palace, Venice

CHECKING-IN TO | CABANA TRAVEL | WORLD OF CABANA

“Sometimes I think we only half live over here. The Italians live all the way,” wrote Ernest Hemingway to his sister in 1919. The writer spent long seasons at The Gritti Palace,a Luxury Collection Hotel, Venice the Gothic palazzo on the Grand Canal that has housed the city's most devoted admirers for over a century. Sophie Goodwin checks-in to the Hemingway Presidential Suite and discovers the unbridled glory of Venice.

BY SOPHIE GOODWIN | CABANA TRAVEL | 10 APRIL 2026

"Venice is not only a city of fantasy and freedom. It is also a city of joy and pleasure," wrote Ernest Hemingway, a regular guest at The Gritti Palace.

Resplendent on Venice's Grand Canal, The Gritti Palace, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Venice began life as a private residence for the Pisani family in 1475, before becoming the home of Doge Andrea Gritti in 1525 – a man whose instinct for grandeur has been faithfully honored ever since. 

Converted into a hotel in 1895 and completely restored in 2013, The Gritti has welcomed a guest list that reads like a roll call of the 20th century's most restless intelligences: Hemingway, Maugham, Ruskin, Churchill. The restoration was careful to honor this legacy, preserving Venetian tapestries and velvets, Rubelli archival fabrics, handcrafted Girandole mirrors, and Murano glass chandeliers throughout the 61 rooms and 21 suites. Many overlook the majestic domes of Santa Maria della Salute, which appear to float in the near distance. 

On the Grand Canal, a slick of pewter and gold, the domes Santa Maria della Salute.

Our suite was a veritable window into history: a signed first-edition copy of Across The River and Into The Trees is kept under lock and key in the glass coffee table in the living room, the furniture all Rococò curves and aged patina, sumptuous carpets over traditional terrazzo, and Murano glass refracting the canal light from above. 

The living room was dressed entirely in sage green and gold. White stucco plasterwork curled and bloomed across the ceiling from the lichen-colored walls. Floor-length damask curtains, swathed and tasselled in the Venetian manner, framed tall windows giving onto the canal and rooftops beyond. On the left wall, a great gilt Girandole mirror doubled the room. It is easy to understand why Hemingway kept coming back.

The Riva Lounge, The Gritti's famous open-air terrace, designed after the sleek wooden decks of 1930s Italian yachts, is where Venice conducts its social life on warm evenings. Bar Longhi, which lies just beyond, has Venetian etched mirror walls and serves what may be the strongest vodka martini on the lagoon. Service is flawless, artfully looking after every individual (with their individual needs) walking through the gilded doors.

Breakfast and dinner at Club del Doge, under Executive Chef Alberto Fol, is where the hotel's commitment to Venice extends beyond aesthetics into sustainability. Since 2025, The Gritti Palace has supported the conservation and maintenanceafter the restoration of of the Orto del Redentore, a one-hectare garden on Giudecca badly damaged by the 2019 floods, and Fol draws from its harvest – olive oil, herbs, garden vegetables, all raised locally on the other side of the lagoon.

Breakfast in particular is a cornucopia of beauty: sublime looking pastries stuffed with artisan cheese and cured meats, strong coffee and freshly squeezed juices, eggs any way served to order, all framed in elegant blue porcelain.

The Patron of the Arts programme is, perhaps, where the hotel's true character reveals itself. The Gritti's long-standing partnership with Save Venice has funded the restoration of the Sala delle Quattro Porte in the Doge's Palace, including Tintoretto's extraordinary ceiling, completed this February and reopened to the public for the first time in years.

The Explorer's Library, a beautiful room of travel curiosities, rare books, and antiques, is where the literary spirit of the place feels most concentrated. It was here, in 2023, that two Francesco Guardi masterpieces returned to Venice after centuries away. The Gritti does not merely decorate itself with Venetian culture, it captures the city's heart and soul.

We departed on a Riva boat across the lagoon to the airport, the city shrinking to a long line of domes and campanili against the sky. Some addresses stay with you like cities, not as places visited but as things that have happened to you, concluded by Hemingway: "Venice is not only a city of fantasy and freedom. It is also a city of joy and pleasure".