Nobody arrives in Venice and sees all of the city for the
first time. Founded fifteen hundred years ago on a cluster
of mudflats in the centre of the lagoon, Venice rose to
become Europe's main trading post between the West and
the East, and at its height controlled an empire that spread
north to the Dolomites and over the sea as far as Cyprus.
As its wealth increased and its population grew, the fabric
of the city grew ever more dense. The historic centre of
Venice is made up of 118 islands, most of which began life
as a micro-community, each with a parish church or two,
and a square for public meetings. Very few parts of the
hundred or so islets that compose the historic centre are
not built up, and very few of its closely knit streets bear no
sign of the city's long lineage. Even in the most
insignificant alleyway you might find fragments of a
medieval building embedded in the wall of a house like
fossil remains lodged in a cliff face.
In the heyday of the Venetian Republic, some 200,000
people lived in Venice. Merchants from Germany,
Greece, Turkey and a host of other countries
maintained warehouses here; transactions in the
banks and bazaars of the Rialto dictated the value of
commodities all over the continent; in the dockyards of
the Arsenale the workforce was so vast that a warship
could be built and fitted out in a single day; and the
Piazza San Marco was perpetually thronged with
people here to set up business deals or report to the
Republic's government.
The Luna Hotel Baglioni is a 12th century hotel
with grand two- tier atrium overlooking San Giorgio
Island and the Grand Canal and 10 meters from San
Marco Square in Venice. The 108 air- conditioned
guestrooms feature a period-style décor with silk
fabrics, chandeliers, objets d'art, marble bathrooms
and antique furnishings. All rooms have marble
bathrooms with complimentary toiletries and bathroom
telephones, and come equipped with cable television,
direct-dial phones, minibars, hair dryers, safes, and
complimentary newspapers. Click here for more info
Luna Hotel Baglioni
- Venice
Hotel Londra Palace
Venice
Hotel Londra Palace is a romantic waterfront hotel near Piazza San Marco This
five-story hotel has 53 air-conditioned guestrooms. The high-ceilinged rooms are appointed
with silk-covered walls, 19th-century Biedermeier furniture, and gilt-framed original oil paintings.

Each room has a 21-inch satellite TV with Internet access (surcharge). Bathrooms of
yellow-and-orange marble have bathrobes, slippers, telephones, makeup mirrors, bidets, gold  
faucets, and heated towel racks. About
two-thirds of the rooms have lagoon views, and
some rooms have balconies or terraces.

The hotel's Ristorante Do Leoni serves
sophisticated Venetian cuisine in a handsome
room with a stone-mosaic floor and a wall of
windows overlooking the lagoon.
San Clemente Palace - - Venice
San Clemente Palace occupies a
restored 19th century three-storey monastery
on a private island, 15 minutes by shuttle boat
from Piazza San Marco. The guestrooms are
defined by four-metre ceilings, arched windows
providing views of the gardens, terrazzo floors
with rugs, reading chairs, and cocktail tables.

Rooms come with satellite television, minibars,
and complimentary newspapers. Beige-marble
bathrooms include separate tubs and showers,
bathrobes, slippers, Etro toiletries, and a music
system.  

The hotel occupies a monastic building dating
back to 1859, set in four acres of centuries-old
gardens. Abandoned in the 1980s, the
monastery was converted to a hotel and
opened in 2003.  
A water-bus is the quickest way of getting
between far-flung points, and even in
cases where it might be quicker to walk, a
canal trip is sometimes the more pleasant
way of covering the distance.
Ai Pini Park Hotel is set in a historic villa
surrounded by gardens 800 metres from the
train station and seven kilometres from Venice.
It features 33 guestrooms over three floors, all
of which feature Murano glass wall lights,
parquet flooring, and colorful modern art.
Rooms are air-conditioned and include satellite
television, video-game consoles, Internet
connections, minibars, safes, and hair dryers

Guests can relax in the landscaped gardens,
enjoy lunch in the picnic area, or watch the
world go by from the gazebo.
The many attractions of Venice are just seven
kilometres away and the medieval city of Treviso is 20
kilometres from the hotel.
Ai Pini Park Hotel
- Venice
The monuments which draw the largest crowds are the Basilica di San Marco -
the mausoleum of the city's patron saint - and the Palazzo Ducale - the home
of the doge and all the governing councils. Certainly these are the most
dramatic structures in the city: the first a mosaic-clad emblem of Venice's
Byzantine origins, the second perhaps the finest of all secular Gothic buildings.
Every parish rewards exploration, though - a roll-call of the churches worth
visiting would feature over fifty names, and a list of the important paintings and
sculptures they contain would be twice as long. Two of the distinctively
Venetian institutions known as the Scuole retain some of the outstanding
examples of Italian Renaissance art - the Scuola di San Rocco , with its dozens
of pictures by Tintoretto, and the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni ,
decorated with a gorgeous sequence by Carpaccio.
One museum that should not
be missed is the Accademia ,
an assembly of Venetian
painting that consists of
virtually nothing but
masterpieces; other prominent
collections include the museum
of eighteenth-century art in the
Ca' Rezzonico and the Museo
Correr , the civic museum of
Venice.
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