#2 in Top 20 Venice for An Anniversary · ★★★★★
The Gritti Palace, A Luxury Collection Hotel
Doge's palace turned hotel, Riva Lounge on the Grand Canal — the anniversary classic.
Doge's palace turned hotel, Riva Lounge on the Grand Canal — the anniversary classic.
"Doge's palace turned hotel, Riva Lounge on the Grand Canal — the anniversary classic."
The Gritti Palace is the 15th-century palazzo of the Doge Andrea Gritti (the 77th Doge of Venice, 1523-1538) — the Marriott Luxury Collection took over the property in 2003 and ran a four-year, €40-million renovation ending in 2013 that returned the property to its Doge-period architectural standard. Eighty-two rooms and suites, the upper-tier Hemingway Presidential Suite (named for Ernest Hemingway, who lived in the suite while writing Across the River and Into the Trees in 1950) is the working milestone-anniversary flagship. The asset is the working Riva Lounge — the canal-side cocktail terrace that overlooks the Grand Canal at the most-cinematic stretch of the canal (between Santa Maria della Salute and Santa Maria del Giglio), the working anniversary-pre-dinner-cocktail-and-photograph venue. Club del Doge (the in-house restaurant on the Grand Canal terrace) is the working anniversary-dinner space, the dinner room from the Hemingway novel and a literary-anniversary asset in itself. The Gritti Palace is the right pick for the literary-and-historic anniversary — the trip's working centerpiece is the Hemingway-Suite-or-the-Riva-Lounge sunset cocktail, and the Marriott-Bonvoy loyalty value is the secondary working asset.
Hemingway Presidential Suite (the literary-flagship) or Gritti Suite (Grand Canal-facing) for the entry-level palazzo experience.
Pre-dinner cocktail at the Riva Lounge at 6pm — the corner two-top by the canal-edge railing is the working table. Book Club del Doge for the anniversary dinner. The Hemingway Suite is bookable through the Marriott Luxury Collection ambassador team.
The Gritti Palace, A Luxury Collection Hotel sits within our broader Top 20 Hotels in Venice for an Anniversary list. It scored an aggregate 9.9/10 across the three editorial criteria — competitive against the field but, on an anniversary-specific factors, the angle above is what earned its rank. For the alternatives in the same Venice neighbourhood, see San Marco, Grand Canal and adjacent. For a different city entirely, see the related lists below.
If you have already chosen the dates, our editor recommends booking the room twelve weeks ahead. The best suites with the right view orientation go first, and inventory for the popular months is quoted in months, not weeks. Suite-level rooms with private plunge pools or terraces — the ones that earn this rank — are typically the first to sell out.