Hotel Danieli Site Features

The original Palazzo Dandolo is a rare surviving example of a Venetian Gothic private palace built around 1400, with pointed-arch windows and an asymmetrical water-facing facade typical of the style.

The 19th- and 20th-century additions built to expand the hotel were designed to sit alongside the historic palace rather than replace it, so the Gothic facade remains the building's most recognizable feature from the Riva degli Schiavoni and the lagoon.

The Gothic courtyard and staircase

The most striking survival from the Palazzo Dandolo is the covered inner courtyard, with a gilded four-storey staircase rising through it under a glass roof. The glazing is a 19th-century hotel addition -- what had been an open Venetian courtyard was roofed to make a lobby, which is why the space reads as both palace and hotel at once.

The three buildings

What is sold as one hotel is three connected ones: the Gothic Palazzo Dandolo of around 1400, the Palazzo Danieli Excelsior added in the 1940s, and a third structure joined later. Only the first is the historic palace; guests are frequently surprised to be housed in one of the others.

The rooftop terrace

The top-floor terrace restaurant and bar look south over the Bacino di San Marco to San Giorgio Maggiore -- one of the few elevated public viewpoints in Venice that is not a bell tower, and the reason non-residents come here at all.

The hotel stands on the Riva degli Schiavoni, the broad waterfront promenade running east from the Piazzetta, at the corner where the Rio del Vin meets the lagoon -- roughly two minutes' walk from the Doge's Palace.

That frontage is unusual for Venice. Most of the city meets the water along narrow canals; the Riva is wide, open and south-facing, so the buildings along it get direct light and a long view across the Bacino to San Giorgio Maggiore and the Giudecca -- the reason this stretch became the city's hotel quarter in the 19th century rather than any older prestige.

It also means heavy through traffic. The Riva is the main pedestrian route between San Marco and the Arsenale and Biennale gardens, and the San Zaccaria vaporetto pontoons sit directly outside, so the ground floor faces one of the busiest quaysides in the city.

Being on the open lagoon edge, the building is among those most exposed to acqua alta during the autumn and winter tides.