The Gritti Palace opens Venice’s restoration sites to guests, from the Doge’s Palace to the Rubelli workshops

Autumn returns Venice to its residents and its restoration works. This is the moment chosen by The Gritti Palace, the The Luxury Collection address housed in the Palazzo Pisani Gritti on the Grand Canal, to offer its guests what the city usually keeps hidden: the restoration workshops it finances, scaffolding included.

A patron of the Doge’s Palace

Since 2023, the hotel has been the main private sponsor of a three-year programme conducted with the American foundation Save Venice: the restoration of the Porta del Senato in the Hall of the Four Doors at the Doge’s Palace, walked through every year by nearly a million visitors. Save Venice is continuing with the Giants’ Staircase and its statue of Mars by Jacopo Sansovino. Gritti guests can now access these restoration sites with the conservators, outside of opening hours, upon reservation with the concierge.

The Doge returned home

The palace was the residence of Andrea Gritti, Doge from 1523 to 1538, whose portrait attributed to Titian now graces the salons. The painting was repurchased at a Sotheby’s sale in London to return to the house, which also shelters tapestries, Murano glassware and restored period furniture. To dress some of the 88 rooms and suites, the hotel commissioned the Venetian house Rubelli to reweave historic fabrics from its archives.

Cuisine, market and lagoon

The table at Club del Doge, on the terrace overlooking the Salute, is led by chef Alberto Fol, who also runs the hotel’s cooking school: morning tours of the Rialto market, followed by risotto and cicchetti classes. Other seasonal experiences take guests outside the hotel: gilding and mosaic workshops, boat trips to the lagoon islands, and access to the private gardens supported by the hotel as part of a botanical and architectural collaboration.

Why this matters for Venice

Faced with mass tourism which it is trying to curb, the city is seeking visitors who fund its preservation. The Gritti turns its patronage into a reason to stay, a path followed by other Italian luxury hotels, from Rome to Florence. For a glimpse of how The Gritti compares to its neighbours, our selection of the Venice Film Festival hotels completes this feature.

Photos: façade and dining room by Didier Descouens (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Walter Schärer (CC BY-SA 3.0), portrait of the Doge (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons.