When Orient Express — a name more readily associated with the romance of rail travel than Venetian stone — unveiled its second Italian hotel in late March 2026, it did so with considerable restraint. Not in scale or ambition, but in where it chose to land. Palazzo Donà Giovannelli sits in Cannaregio, the quieter northern sestiere where Venice still feels lived-in, unhurried, and genuinely itself.
The building had been operating as a private palazzo for nearly six centuries. Its reinvention as a hotel is the work of architect and interior designer Aline Asmar d’Amman, who spent eight years on the project. The result is less a restoration than a sustained act of cultural excavation, one where frescoed ceilings, a celestially vaulted octagonal staircase, and the building’s layered architectural history are not backdrop but substance.
Asmar d’Amman’s vision is anchored in the colori persi, the lost colours of Venice, threaded through textiles, wall finishes, and furnishings across the property. The Piano Nobile’s historic salons are layered with embossed leathers and moiré silks, each room reading as a distinct composition rather than part of a unified scheme. A former open mineral courtyard, il Corte del Conte, has been reimagined as an interior living room anchored by bespoke Murano chandeliers. The secret garden, concealed behind centuries-old walls and lit by Venetian lanterns, is quieter still.
Across 47 rooms, suites, and residences, the interiors follow the building’s own architectural logic rather than overlaying it with a singular aesthetic. Six Signature Suites each carry their own name and narrative. Dining is anchored by three-Michelin-starred chef Heinz Beck, whose fine dining concept unfolds in the historic orangerie, alongside La Casati, an all-day restaurant evoking the spirit of the avant-garde Marchesa Luisa Casati, and The Wagon Bar, an Art Deco-inflected nod to the original Orient Express lounge cars.
Guests arrive by boat through the Gothic water gate.
Images © Giulio Ghirardi.
