Venice, Italy

Ca' Di Dio

Price per night from$278.45

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR267.50), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Ca' Di Dio Photos

Style

Laidback Venetian hospitality

Setting

Lounging by the lagoon

Explore

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Though parts of Ca’ di Dio date back to medieval times, there’s nothing old-fashioned about its 21st-century update: all Murano-glass chandeliers, polished marble and preserved frescoes. This contemporary take on a traditional Venetian house sits around three internal courtyards, where you can breakfast on delicate Venetian pastries and ristretto, or find a shady spot beneath softly scented mimosa and magnolia trees to leaf through the hotel’s own inside guide to the best hidden local attractions. A sense of calm pervades throughout the hotel, from the bigger-than-average bedrooms to an airy lobby that’s decorated with antique statues and porticoes from old churches, though the true path to enlightenment is more likely to be found in the spa’s treatment rooms.

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A typical Venetian apéritif a person, each stay, and room upgrade on arrival (subject to availability)

Facilities

Photos Ca' Di Dio facilities

Need to know

Rooms

66 rooms across three floors, including 57 suites.

Check–Out

Noon, but flexible for a charge and subject to availability. Check-in, 3pm.

More details

Rates usually include breakfast.

Also

Don’t be put out by the lack of a traditional front desk or concierge. The hotel’s ‘Venetian house’ ethos means that instead of a rotating cast of identikit staff, you’ll have one or two friendly points of contact to look after you throughout your stay.

Please note

The hotel’s national identification code (CIN) is IT027042A1QD8T9DAW

At the hotel

Two restaurants, spa and gym, free WiFi. In-rooms: flatscreen TV, minibar, coffee machine, kettle, bathrobes, slippers and air-conditioning.

Our favourite rooms

Make like a doge and check in to one of the hotel’s two Altana Suites. Upping the wow factor spectacularly, each has a staircase that climbs to its own private roof terrace. Up here in your ivory (ok, mostly wooden) tower, you can spend cocktail hour soaking in uninterrupted sunset views across the shimmering lagoon to the Benedictine spire of San Giorgio Maggiore. The other suites are no slouches either, all with bags of space (unusual by Venice hotel standards), polished stone floors, exposed beams, upholstered panelling, Murano-glass lamps and gleaming marble bathrooms.

Spa

Relaxing treatments or an adrenaline-pumping workout can be found at the Pura spa and wellness centre. There's also a sauna and steam bath, €25 each for 30 minutes (or €40 for both).

Packing tips

Pack your biggest, floppiest straw hat for those eating-gelato-in-a-gondola photo opportunities.

Pet‐friendly

Pups under 15kg are welcome for €40 a day, except in the restaurant and pool area. See more pet-friendly hotels in Venice.

Children

Extra beds can be added to suites on request and babysitting is available for an extra charge.

Sustainability efforts

Ca’ di Dio is admirably obsessive about keeping it local, to the extent that the water for its concealed cooling system is slurped straight from the lagoon. There’s a kitchen garden in the courtyard and many of the hotel’s decorative elements come courtesy of local craftspeople, such as the bespoke Murano-glass lamps and chandeliers found throughout.

Food and Drink

Photos Ca' Di Dio food and drink

Top Table

If weather permits, your best bet for lagoon views is on Vero’s terrace, where people-watching is de rigueur at lunch, and the sun setting on San Giorgio and the lagoon over dinner might even make you feel like you’re in your very own Monet masterpiece.

Dress Code

You’re meant to feel at home here, so dress codes are informal. But this is Italy, so you might want to leave the jogging pants at home and bring something a little more eye-catching for dining in Vero.

Hotel restaurant

Polished Venetian floors, frescoed ceilings and crisp white tablecloths are the order of the day at Vero, the hotel’s main restaurant, with seating on the terrace overlooking the lagoon to San Giorgio Maggiore in the warmer months. The ethos here is simple yet refined Venetian home cooking – traditional fish, meat and pasta dishes made using wholly local produce and ingredients from the courtyard garden – served alongside handpicked wines from the Veneto. Vero is open for lunch and dinner.

Essentia is a less formal affair. Designed for relaxed daytime dining and snacking, it’s set in the internal courtyard amid the fragrant trees and shrubs, meandering pathways and two original stone wells.

Hotel bar

Just off the lobby is Alchemia, a gleaming cocktail bar where mixologists knock up traditional and experimental concoctions using local ingredients.

Last orders

Breakfast is served in Essentia from 7am until 10.30am, with all-day dining thereafter. In Vero, dinner is from 7pm to 11pm. Lunch is available here during the summer months only. Alchemia opens at 11am and closes at 1am.

Location

Photos Ca' Di Dio location
Address
Ca' Di Dio
Riva Ca' di Dio, 2181
Venice
30122
Italy

Ca’ di Dio sits on the waterfront in Venice's laidback Castello district, just a few minutes’ stroll from Piazza San Marco. There’s a less hurried pace in this historic neighbourhood, where locals sip wine alfresco as the sun sets on the Riva.

Planes

Venice’s Marco Polo airport is served by the Alilaguna water bus (vaporetto), which drops you right in front of the hotel at Arsenale. Vaporetto tickets can be purchased individually, or in discounted one- to three-day passes, in case you’re planning to sightsee your socks off.

Trains

Arrivals at Venezia Santa Lucia can also take the vaporetto for the 40-minute ride to Arsenale. Landlubbers should hop off a couple of stops early for an espresso at Piazza San Marco. The hotel lies a 10-minute stroll along the lagoon from here.

Automobiles

Venice’s narrow alleys and waterways mean that – unless you’re rich enough to own an amphibious vehicle – your best bet is to park on the mainland, which is cheaper and less prone to traffic snarl-ups than the roads around the city centre. From Mestre, you can take the train or ferry into the centre.

Other

Clichéd it may well be, but you can’t really say you’ve been to Venice until you’ve taken a gondola ride or private water taxi along the Grand Canal. Both will pick you up and drop you off directly at the hotel’s side entrance on Rio de l’Arsenale.

Worth getting out of bed for

Even the laziest explorer will find ticking off Venice's biggest attractions a breeze. It’s just a 10-minute waterfront stroll to Piazza San Marco, where the cathedral’s grand Byzantine domes, ludicrously opulent Doge’s Palace and Bridge of Sighs will provide more Instagrammable photo opportunities than your last three holidays combined. If your poor beleaguered feet are equal to the challenge, you’re only about another 10 minutes from here to the Rialto Bridge and Peggy Guggenheim Collection. But if even that seems too much like hard work, simply flop into a gondola and let someone else take the strain for a while.

For a taste of the true Venice, stroll east from the hotel away from the centre, through ramshackle narrow streets where washing hangs drying between buildings overhead, and small fishing boats bob on not-so-grand canals. Here the intrepid traveller will be rewarded with artisan shops, bars and cafés along Via Garibaldi – a wide boulevard beloved of Venetians.

This is also where you’ll find the Giardini della Biennale, a parkland oasis that plays host to the Venice Art Biennale every other year. Stroll the leafy boulevards admiring the magnificent monuments and palatial pavilions that dot the landscape. Art fiends visiting between May and November in odd-numbered years can expect to experience a dizzying smorgasbord of contemporary works from across the globe, displayed throughout the Giardini, Arsenale dockyards and beyond.

Local restaurants

A firm favourite with in-the-know locals, Osteria Alle Testiere is perhaps Castello’s tiniest seafood restaurant, seating just 22 at a time. You’re advised to book well in advance if you want to find out for yourself what the fuss is about. The menu changes daily, based on whatever is freshest at market that morning, but expect classic Venetian fish dishes like steamed spider crab and potato gnocchetti with lobster, alongside an extensive range of local wines. Desserts like classic tiramisu and Venetian cream caramel will surely have you loosening your belt before last orders. A 20-minute vaporetto ride along the lagoon will take you to Hotel Il Palazzo Experimental, whose Il Ristorante Adriatica is an upmarket, dress-to-impress kind of place, serving playful takes on Italian specialities from the coastal regions of the Adriatic. Think risotto of scallops and white asparagus or cuttlefish with lemon, rocket and almonds.

Local bars

A romantic evening stroll north through Venice backstreets, skirting the Grand Canal and Rialto Bridge, will take you to Vino Vero, an intimate and informal canalfront wine bar where bottles are stacked ceiling-high on towering wooden shelves. Specialising in natural wines from small, mostly local producers, this Venice institution is also famed for its cicchetti (Venetian tapas). After several platefuls and, more than likely, one glass of valpolicella too many, it’s recommended you skip the stroll back and take a water taxi instead.

Reviews

Photos Ca' Di Dio reviews
Anna Bu Kliewer

Anonymous review

By Anna Bu Kliewer, Natural artist

From the first moment we arrived at Ca’ Di Dio, our experience manager Matteo was extremely welcoming. He provided a map of things to do around Venice and shared his personal recommendations. The staff made us feel at ease after our flight, lending the whole hotel a warm energy – they were even so kind as to remind us about the clocks changing. 

Upon entering our room, we were struck by the incredible views of Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute and the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore. Being able to take in the canal and the laguna when you wake up is a fabulous feeling, and I’m not sure if I have ever taken more photos than during our stay at Ca’ Di Dio. The room is very stylish, especially the marble bathroom with its splendid rain shower. The combination of excellent amenities makes you feel pampered.

Once we had exhausted the room’s 180-degree vistas, we noticed the delicious snacks and bottle of bubbly the hotel had left to celebrate our arrival, which just so happened to be on the city’s 1602 birthday. The hotel itself is 751 years old, but effortlessly merges the modern with the traditional. The spacious lobby and eclectic reading room, for example, are adorned with contemporary touches, while Murano glass features nod to the city’s ancient traditions. 

Spending the night in the room was fun, with the TV offering Chromecast – which allows you to watch your own favourite shows while enjoying wine and room service. Later that evening, I tucked myself into bed and had the nicest night’s sleep. The bed was so comfortable, it made me feel like I was in the Princess and the Pea. 

Next morning’s breakfast was a feast of beautiful pastries, fruit and salads. We made a special order for an omelette, which was almost as fabulous as our view of the beautiful magnolia tree in the courtyard. 

We spent our day in the city guided by Matteo’s suggestions. When he heard I was a big ice cream fan, he pointed me to the best gelato spot in Venice. And he was absolutely right, I was blown away with each of my four scoops.

The area in which Ca’ Di Dio is located is quieter than expected, lending it a feeling of authenticity. The surrounding restaurants are attended by locals rather than tourists, and there is an array of charming wine bars from which you can enjoy the romantic surroundings. But it’s still very close to the city’s main attractions. I love the mix of narrow labyrinthine streets, charming houses and shops, as well as the neighbouring Giardini (a park which hosts the Venice Biennale pavilions) – outside of Biennale season, it’s a serene green space from which you can gaze across the beautiful laguna.

Venice is surrounded by many beautiful islands, but we decided to visit Burano upon Matteo’s recommendation. The hotel can arrange a private boat to take you, but we opted for the ferry. Once there, we discovered a riot of colourful houses which brought a smile to my face.

When we had dinner at the hotel later that evening, the service was exceptional. We loved the wine selection as well as their homemade bread and traditional drinks. A late check-out the following morning allowed us to sleep in and enjoy one final breakfast on the Serenissima. Overall, our stay at Ca’ Di Dio was exceptional and we could have not asked for more.

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