Venice, Italy

Il Palazzo Experimental

Price per night from$199.44

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 (EUR189.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Il Palazzo Experimental Photos

Style

Marbles and mirrors

Setting

Off the beaten canal

Explore

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Il Palazzo Experimental in Venice is a waterside Renaissance palace, with a signature city-view cocktail bar all the big-ticket sights nearby. Dorothée Meilichzon designed the sumptuous interiors in locally inspired shades of terra cotta and soft yellow, while retaining the centuries-old exposed beams and Gothic windows: it’s the ideal spot for watching vaporettos buzz up and down the Giudecca Canal while you tuck into plates of Venetian cicchetti on the restaurant terrace, or take afternoon tea in the secluded garden. You can summon a gondola to the private pier or take a trip on hotel pontoon – or just set out on foot and lose yourself in ‘La Serenissima’…

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

One cocktail each at the bar during your stay

Facilities

Photos Il Palazzo Experimental facilities

Need to know

Rooms

32, including one suite.

Check–Out

10am, check-in 3pm, but both are flexible, subject to availability.

More details

Rates don’t include breakfast, but you can have your way with the buffet for €25 (€18 for kids); expect homemade granola, fresh pastries, eggs and fruit.

Also

Il Palazzo is part of the esteemed Experimental group, including Henrietta Hotel in London and Grand Pigalle Hotel in Paris.

At the hotel

Free WiFi. In rooms: TV, minibar, air-conditioning, free bottled water, tea- and coffee-making kit.

Our favourite rooms

Go for a Deluxe Canal room, for the extra space, sitting area, and views over the Giudecca Canal.

Packing tips

Binoculars, for peering at the pontoons zipping along the canal (bonus: you’ll feel like a Bond villain).

Also

There are two ground-floor rooms which are suitable for wheelchair users, and all the common areas are also accessible.

Children

All ages are welcome. Babysitting is available for €30 an hour (plus extra for taxis and if the sitter is needed after midnight). There are high chairs and a kids’ menu in the restaurant.

Sustainability efforts

All bath and cleaning products are environmentally friendly, water and energy consumption are monitored regularly and single-use plastics are a thing of the past. The restaurant uses local, seasonal produce and the hotel prioritises hiring local staff and working with local suppliers.

Food and Drink

Photos Il Palazzo Experimental food and drink

Top Table

The prime perches are on the sun-trap terrace, overlooking the Giudecca Canal.

Dress Code

Anything but stripes and straw boaters, unless you want to be ambushed by selfie-seeking tourists.

Hotel restaurant

The Giudecca-side restaurant specialises in modern Venetian cuisine, which means you can look forward to fresh takes on seafood classics, handmade pastas, and piles of polenta. Booths and banquettes make for an intimate indoor space, and there’s an outdoor terrace for alfresco dining. Meanwhile, in the rear courtyard, you’ll find tables set for breakfast and afternoon tea.

Hotel bar

The Experimental Group prides itself on first-class and fiercely creative cocktails. Pick from a menu of newly imagined house drinks and sip them in the sun on the terrace, or in the Cristina Celestino–designed interior.

Last orders

Breakfast is from 7am until 11am; food is served in the restaurant until midnight. The Experimental Cocktail Club serves food from 7pm until 10pm, and drinks from 5pm until 2am.

Room service

There’s no room service yet, but with all of Venice to explore why stay in your room?

Location

Photos Il Palazzo Experimental location
Address
Il Palazzo Experimental
Fondamenta Zattere Al Ponte Lungo 1412
Venice
30123
Italy

Il Palazzo Experimental is on the Giudecca Canal, one of Venice’s busiest waterways just a few minutes’ walk from Ponte dell'Accademia on the Grand Canal.

Planes

You can fly into Venice Marco Polo airport with British Airways or Easyjet, then take a 30-minute transfer to the hotel (€130 each way).

Trains

Santa Lucia station is two kilometers from the hotel, which takes around 20 minutes by water taxi. There are high-speed Trenitalia services from Venice to Florence (two hours), Milan (two and a half hours) and Rome (three and a half hours).

Automobiles

There aren’t many roads here, ragazzi.

Other

The hotel has its own private pier on the Rio del Ognissanti, so you can come and go easily by gondola or vaporetto water taxi.

Worth getting out of bed for

Wake up and check on the morning traffic on the Giudecca Canal, then head down for breakfast in the courtyard garden. After a day of pottering around piazzas and marvelling at museums, return to the very same spot for afternoon tea. Or, if you’re in the mood for something stiffer, one of the signature house cocktails.

Take a day trip to Burano Island, where colourful fishermen’s houses line the canals, and craftspeople weave delicate lace (even better, you get views of Venice from the boat). Rollover, Renaissance – it’s all about modern art at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection; check the exhibition programme, and book tickets ahead of time. And then, of course, there’s the Rialto Bridge. OK, it’s not exactly under-the-radar, but it’s just one of those things that has to be seen – go at night and you’ll have fewer tourists to contend with.

A trip to Venice wouldn’t be complete without a stop at Piazza San Marco, the iconic centrepiece of the Floating City.

Local restaurants

There’s no shortage of coffee in Venice, but the best beans in town are at Caffe del Doge. Superstar chef Massimiliano Alajmo’s Amo whips up baked, steamed and fried pizza along with family-style antipasti. Osteria al Portego (Calle Malvasia) is a Venice institution, known and loved for its bar counter cicchetti and local wines.

Local bars

Cocktails are the cornerstone of the Experimental group, so stick with the hotel bar for your sazeracs and spritzes.

Reviews

Photos Il Palazzo Experimental reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this canal-side hotel in Venice and unpacked their Murano glass and Burano lace, a full account of their Floating City break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Il Palazzo Experimental in Venice…

Venice is everything you expect and more – more museums than you could ever do justice to, more gondolas than you could ever count, and more people than it was ever designed to handle. So when you’re visiting it, you need to box clever – and that’s where Il Palazzo Experimental comes in. It’s only a few minutes’ walk (or boat ride) from everything you’ve seen on the postcards, but it’s niftily positioned off the tourist trail. Your local ‘hood, Dorsoduro, is the city’s erudite university district, which means that you can mix it with the locals at unpretentious wine bars, and escape the crowds at the end of a long day of sightseeing. In this most poetic of cities, even the building itself has a relatively prosaic recent history, as the headquarters of the Adriatica shipping company. All of which combines to make Il Palazzo Experimental a savvy choice for a first-time visitor or Venice veteran – and perhaps the city’s best-kept secret.

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Price per night from $189.94

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