Venice Reclaimed: The Floating City's Sparkling New Era

[Learn more](https://www.fourseasons.com/magazine/from-the-magazine/venice-reclaimed/)


Once written off as a historic theme park, Venice’s cultural reinvention is crowned by the stunning restoration of the Danieli as a Four Seasons hotel.

[From The Magazine](https://www.fourseasons.com/magazine/from-the-magazine/)

For years, the story of Venice was one of decline. The population was shrinking. Grand palazzi sat empty. Locals lamented that the city had become overrun by day-trippers and cruise ship passengers who came, shopped, ate, and left. Critics predicted that Venice would soon be nothing more than a shrine to its own past.

How wrong they were. Today, Venice is one of Europe’s most vibrant cultural capitals. Designers and collectors are restoring palazzi and opening galleries and foundations. Artisans are finding new patrons. Venice’s events calendar has become richer and more robust with the addition of such standouts as [Venice Glass Week](https://theveniceglassweek.com/en/), which ran in mid-September this year.

And now the legendary Danieli—reopening as [Danieli, Venezia, A Four Seasons Hotel](https://www.fourseasons.com/venice/)—has been revitalized for a new generation of travellers. Under the direction of the renowned French interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon, the hotel’s landmark neo-Gothic lobby in the 14th-century Palazzo Dandolo has been carefully conserved, while [Terrazza Danieli](https://www.fourseasons.com/venice/dining/restaurants/restaurant-terrazza-danieli/), the famous rooftop restaurant with sweeping views across the lagoon, has been refreshed in a luminous palette of sky blue, ivory, and gold. A ground-floor spa and swimming pool—the only hotel pool in Venice proper—will open late this year in the adjacent Casanova building, adding a contemporary amenity without compromising the property’s rich character.


A guest room overlooking Plazzo San Marco at Danieli, Venezia, A Four Seasons Hotel


Rooftop dining at Restaurant Terrazza Danieli

“Venice has a historical ambience all on its own,” says Christian Zandonella, the hotel’s general manager. “But we can live and experience that history in a modern way.”

For more than a thousand years, Venice was one of Europe’s great powers—an independent maritime republic ruled by elected doges whose merchant fleets dominated trade from the Adriatic to the eastern Mediterranean. That remarkable run ended abruptly in 1797, when Napoleon Bonaparte toppled the Republic of Venice, abolishing a sovereign state that had endured for generations and sending its last doge into exile. After periods of French and Austrian rule, Venice became part of a unified Italy in 1866, but its fortunes continued to fade.

“Venice was poor until 1945,” says Toto Bergamo Rossi, director of the cultural-preservation foundation Venetian Heritage. At the end of World War II, America’s Marshall Plan fueled an “economic miracle” in Italy and helped restore prosperity to the city for a time.