Hotel Metropole

Hotel Metropole is the kind of Venetian hotel that could only look excessive somewhere else. On the Riva degli Schiavoni, close to St Mark’s Square and facing the lagoon traffic, its façade still carries that wonderful old Metropole lettering, red awnings, green shutters, a lamp in the foreground if Venice is in a cooperative mood. You arrive in full postcard territory. Then the hotel pulls you indoors and lowers the light.

This was once an orphanage where Antonio Vivaldi gave music lessons. Better still, the Orientalbar&Bistrot now occupies the chapel where he taught. There are hotel bars with a view, and then there are hotel bars where you can sip a cocktail in a former Venetian chapel and feel history trying not to interrupt.

The Beggiato family turned the place into something closer to a collector’s house than a conventional five star hotel. Rooms are not styled into submission. They are dense, theatrical and personal: carved beds, teal damask, red velvet, gilded mirrors, old wood, Eastern references, candles, tassels, and antiques that seem to have travelled through several centuries before finding their corner. Some rooms look to the canal or lagoon; others feel like private boxes in a very old opera house.

There is also a tea room with Silk Road ambitions, a spa glowing with warm water and gold, and that faint sense of black pepper in the air. The Metropole will not please everyone. Anyone craving pale linen, straight lines and quiet beige perfection may need to breathe deeply. For travellers who want Venice with shadows, fingerprints and a slightly decadent memory, the Metropole feels less like a hotel stay than a key to one of the city’s more intriguing private rooms.