A city in northeast Italy, Venice is built atop 118 small islands separated by romantic winding canals and linked by arching bridges. And while the Piazza San Marco and Saint Mark’s Basilica have their own singular charms, it is perhaps the Grand Canal that is the city’s most iconic feature. Travelling along in a soft and curving s-shape through the centre of Venice, the Grand Canal is the city’s main thoroughfare, lined with more than 170 buildings between 200 and 700 years old, where gondolas and vaporetti [water buses] meander along. It is here, in one of the regal old homes directly on the Grand Canal that Aman Canale Grande Hotel sits, amidst the romance and history of this beautiful city . . .
“The palazzo in which Aman is housed, Palazzo Papadopoli, was built in the 16th century by the architect Gian Giacomo dé Grigi, as commissioned by the Coccina family of Bergamo. At the beginning of the 19th century, the property was bought by two brothers, Nicolò and Angelo Papadopoli Aldobrandini. They entrusted the internal decoration of the piano nobile – the main living area of the palazzo, to Michelangelo Guggenheim, a leading exponent of the Neo-Renaissance and Rococo styles. He reinvented the space, turning the palazzo into one of the most significant examples of these styles in Venice. The brothers also bought two adjacent buildings which they razed in order to build two gardens – very unusual features in Venice. Today these beautiful gardens are green oases in this historic district, alive with the gentle sounds of water all about.”
