Hotel Cipriani – Giudecca's quiet shore of Venetian glamour

On the quiet tip of Giudecca Island, five minutes by private launch across the lagoon from St Mark's Square, Hotel Cipriani has staged Venetian glamour since Giuseppe Cipriani, founder of Harry's Bar, opened it in 1958. Two years after the project began, the jet set was already arriving, and the guest list has read like a who's who of cinema and royalty ever since. George Clooney got married at the hotel, and its head barman later invented a cocktail with the actor, naming it after one of his films. The MICHELIN Guide now awards Hotel Cipriani Three Keys, its highest distinction for hotels, while the house restaurant, Oro, holds a MICHELIN Star under chef Vania Ghedini with Massimo Bottura as culinary director. The address is simply Giudecca 10 — reached only by water, which is rather the point.

01The house

The hotel grew in stages from Giuseppe Cipriani's original waterfront plot. The hotel then expanded into the neighbouring Palazzo Vendramin, a 15th-century palace facing the lagoon and St Mark's Square, and built Cip's Club on a floating pontoon over the water. The Granaries of the Republic, next door, opened as an event space in 1990. In 2014, as Orient-Express Hotels rebranded as Belmond, the house took its present name and opened Oro, designed by Adam Tihany, which earned a MICHELIN star in December 2015. Belmond itself joined LVMH in 2018.

A multi-phase renovation by architect and designer Peter Marino, chairman of the Venetian Heritage Foundation, is now remaking the hotel room by room. Phase one, unveiled in May 2025, added a double-height, light-filled lobby beside the original entrance and transformed thirteen rooms, including the Master Suites Serenissima and Laguna, reimagined as Venetian apartments complete with libraries and dining rooms, alongside eleven further suites overlooking the Casanova Gardens. Marino has furnished the rooms with art that nods to pieces the hotel owned when it opened in the 1950s and 60s, alongside contemporary works by artists including Emilio Vedova, Conrad Marca-Relli, Carla Accardi and Saverio Rampin.

02Rooms and suites

The hotel's 67 rooms and suites are divided between the main building and Palazzo Vendramin, reached through an ancient courtyard and a flowered passageway, many opening onto balconies over the lagoon, the gardens or St Mark's. Every room carries an Acqua di Parma courtesy line and a Press Reader library of more than 3,000 periodicals in 18 languages. At the top of the house sit four signature suites: the 105-square-metre Palladio Suite, whose private terrace hides a heated plunge pool and Jacuzzi; the Dogaressa Suite, dressed in Fortuny and Rubelli fabrics beneath an original Moorish window facing St Mark's; and the Marino-renovated Serenissima and Laguna, at 188 and 150 square metres, with terrazzo floors and a curated run of contemporary art.

Insider tip

Reached only by boat; currently closed, reopening 1 June 2027. Arrange the launch transfer with your booking.

03Where to eat

Oro, the hotel's MICHELIN-starred restaurant, sits in a round, gold-accented dining room that looks past the garden to the lagoon and the Lido. Since 2024 the kitchen has been led by Head Chef Vania Ghedini, born in Ferrara in 1987, who trained at ALMA and cooked through the Alajmo Group's kitchens and the Royal Mansour Marrakech's Sesamo restaurant before coming to Venice, where she now works alongside culinary director Massimo Bottura. Her cooking threads Veneto produce with the Moroccan notes she picked up abroad: a Moeche egg sauce with guanciale and squid ink built around a rare lagoon shellfish, Lobster Mechoui with mussel sauce, Guinea Fowl with rocket and horseradish, and a Zuppa Inglese written as a tribute to Bottura.

Three further addresses complete the roster. Cip's Club, recognised with a MICHELIN Plate, is built on its own floating pontoon over the lagoon, serving carpaccio and the day's catch from the Rialto Market with St Mark's Square as a backdrop. Il Porticciolo keeps to simpler poolside plates — pasta, pizza, cured ham and melon — through the afternoon, and San Giorgio offers cicchetti-style aperitifs and an early dinner of regional Italian classics.

04The bar

By its own account, Hotel Cipriani is the home of the Bellini, the Prosecco-and-white-peach cocktail Giuseppe Cipriani first mixed at Harry's Bar and which his hotel has poured by the lagoon ever since. Bar Gabbiano, beside the pool, keeps it flowing daily from 11am to 1am, while Il Bacaro Dior, set on the fondamenta with views toward St Mark's, opens for cicchetti and sunset aperitifs. It was here that head barman Walter Bolzonella once invented a cocktail with George Clooney, naming it Buona Notte after the actor's film Good Night, and Good Luck.

05Spa, pool and gardens

Hotel Cipriani has the largest swimming pool in central Venice, surrounded by the tranquil Casanova Gardens, where, legend has it, the real Casanova once met his lovers between the main building and Palazzo Vendramin. The pool's odd dimensions trace back to a famous metres-versus-feet mix-up during the 1968 build, an architectural accident that made it one of Europe's most storied pools; today it is filled with filtered, heated seawater. Wellness now centres on the newly opened Dior Spa, set among the gardens alongside a red-clay tennis court, sauna, steam room and fitness room, with a new Dior boutique next door.

06The neighbourhood

Giudecca remains one of Venice's quietest islands, a ribbon of former convents, shipyards and gardens across the canal from the Zattere. Since 2022 the hotel has hosted Belmond's MITICO art programme with Galleria Continua: Indian artist Subodh Gupta built a hut of recycled aluminium pots in the Casanova Gardens for that year's Art Biennale, and in 2024 French artist Daniel Buren wrapped the hotel's own fountain — the only element surviving from the villa that stood on the site before 1958 — in a circular pavilion of colour and light, titled Sosta colorata per Hotel Cipriani. The hotel also arranges, with the Venice Gardens Foundation, visits to the Convent Garden of the nearby Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, and trips to Squero Crea, one of the island's traditional gondola boatyards.

07Making the most of a stay

A practical note: Hotel Cipriani keeps a seasonal calendar and, as read in October 2026, is closed, with reopening set for 1 June 2027; Cip's Club alone stayed open into the season, until 25 October. The complimentary launch to St Mark's Square takes five minutes, and the hotel can arrange a private water taxi from Marco Polo Airport, a crossing of around 45 minutes. Guests can also book a round on the 18-hole course at Circolo Golf Venezia on the Lido, or take the hotel's mahogany launch out to the glassmakers of Murano and the lace-makers of Burano.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.