Danieli, A Four Seasons Hotel, Venice: The Grand Dame Returns—Hotel Danieli, With a Lighter Touch and a Brighter Future
- Kelli Hunter
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
NOW ACCEPTING RESERVATIONS, Venice’s legendary Hotel Danieli, A Four Seasons Hotel, is set to debut as a Four Seasons experience this summer!
By: Kelli Hunter, TravelAnne Staff Writer
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In Venice, reinvention isn’t often loud. The city would like a subtler sort of transformation — one which respects the patina of centuries but quietly updates what counts most: comfort, craft, and the feeling that a place still belongs to its moment. Its rebirth as the Danieli, A Four Seasons Hotel, Venice feels less like a hotel opening—especially at this particular hotel—unrivaled in its natural familiarity as an international destination known for hosting statesmen, film legends, and moneyed range-holders.
For travelers, the story unfolds as simply and sinfully satisfying: a fabled Venetian address, embodied for centuries in a world of glamour and perilous passion on view on our own screen-filled walls, now becomes something new with an arrival by Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts that is as much intuitive as indulgent in its attention to detail. And it comes at just the right moment when the most sought after/lusted after trips aren’t about checking things off in a new place, but sinking into it to such a degree that what you do understand (or comprehend) is its rhythms: the quiet early morning on the water; how afternoon light can turn palazzi facades into warm honey; how exquisite this ritual of Apertivo as evening pivots in the city.
The hotel, renovated by Four Seasons, is accepting arrivals from August 26, 2026.
A Venetian Address That Will Have the City at Your Feet
In Venice, location is everything — and Danieli’s is the kind to make first-timers gasp and repeat visitors smugly satisfied. Located on the lagoon waterfront along the Riva degli Schiavoni, steps from Piazza San Marco, it puts you in the postcard frame of Venice while bringing to easy walking distance this city’s more secret, locals-led corners.
Danieli’s architecture is part of the lore surrounding the property: Begin with three interconnecting 15th-century Palazzo Dandolo (the façade for which would become a hotel in 1822), but joined over time by new construction that expanded the property’s footprint and storytelling. The effect is a hotel that does not merely occupy Venice so much as embody it — that is, its history of commerce, culture, and exchange.
The Restoration: Old Soul, New Light
The most effective restorations don’t squeegee time away; they trim it, allowing the moral funk to stay while freshening up the experience to accord with modern demands. Interiors have been restored, updated and redecorated by Pierre-Yves Rochon, whose designs tend to pay respect to historic bones while adding a dose of controlled, contemporary elegance.
And Rochon’s detailing at Danieli’s signature palette and materials: rich blues and greens, soft pinks, warm golds, rich terracottas — colors that speak to lagoon light and frescoed ceilings rather than trying to shout over them. Its design language is an untranslated one, spoken in local touchstones from Rubelli fabric to Venetian terrazzo, from Italian marbles to the glow of Murano glassmaking islandThe hotel’s grand atrium, part of the original Palazzo Dandolo, is a showpiece with soaring, four-story-high pink marble columns and an “exquisite golden staircase,” which has always been a feature of the Danieli mythos — now renovated rather than museum-like.
The Vibe: A Legendary Hotel That Feels Fresh, Not Old!
Scale and flexibility are among the most significant changes. Danieli will open with 120 rooms and suites, and potentially more in a 2027 expansion. This initial phase aims to feel more intimate than grand hotels from earlier eras — particularly appealing in Venice, where the best stays can evoke what it is like to live inside the city instead of passing through. “Many people have found Venice this way,” Mr. Fuin said.
One especially guest-oriented note: The hotel also hopes to have many options for connecting rooms and suites, so that families and friends traveling together will be able to settle in just as comfortably — rare anywhere where space is at a premium. And for romantics (or just those who take their morning espresso with a view), many rooms offer unobstructed lagoon vistas.
The goal, as the hotel describes it, is “timeless grandeur” without stiffness — a feeling of history alongside what’s famously anticipatory.
A New Chapter Led by Familiar Hands
Hotels like these make it or break it with their people. Four Seasons points out a dedicated team behind the scenes, full of familiar faces for returning visitors, headed by General Manager Christian Zandonella, who has previously held positions in Rome and Capri. The goal, he says, is to give guests a chance to connect with Venice through the living culture that finds its expression in everyday rituals and experiences beyond gondolas and guidebooks.
This point matters, because Venice today is not just a city blessed with extraordinary history but also a contemporary cultural powerhouse — host to the Venice Film Festival, the Venice Biennale, and anchored by a dining scene that rewards curiosity as well as return visits.
Eating above the lagoon: Terrazza Danieli and the return of the aperitivo hour.
If Venice is the city of light, then Danieli’s best dining moments are programmed to reach that light eye-level. On top, the rooftop restaurant Terrazza Danieli is perched atop the hotel with panoramic views across the lagoon and its island silhouettes — towering high for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Piloting the culinary direction will be executive chef Adriano Rausave, with menus that deliver fresh interpretations of regional dishes made from locally sourced ingredients, some even grown in Venice’s own Sant'Erasmo—frequently referred to as the city’s vegetable garden.
For visitors, it’s the most satisfying type of luxury: more than just a lovely room but a hotel that makes you want to stay in for one perfect meal — especially after finding bridges and ducking into churches and following your curiosity down narrow alleys. The bar at Terrazza Danieli is presented as the perfect spot for aperitivo al fresco, turning the lagoon into copper and rose.
Downstairs, the hotel has another kind of ritual: Bar Dandolo for cocktails, fine wines and a refined coffee and tea service in a smart lobby-adjacent hideaway. This is where you slowly start the evening, maybe with a well-made Negroni (it’s Venice; it’s obligatory), or something fizzy that reflects your arrival mood.
Venetian Experiences That Are Anything but Touristy
Four Seasons’ pitch for Danieli here is equally straight-forward: the real luxury isn’t really staying in Venice, it’s “getting” it. The hotels that bring guests into the city’s living traditions and fragile ecosystem:
Learning Voga Veneta (the traditional, unique Venetian rowing style) at one of the city's oldest rowing clubs, including meeting the artisans who craft the oars that are used on canals.
Stopping by hidden gardens tucked behind historic homes — those green secret spaces that few visitors to the city have a chance to explore — inspired Sebastian.
Discovering the city’s relationship with water and sustainability, from learning about the tidal floodgates that rise and reflect its long-term dedication to resilience as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
For something deliciously contemporary and personal: a visit with local hostess Mimi Todhunter, presented as a window into modern Venetian life.
This is precisely the sort of programming luxury travelers want today: not “more,” but more personal experiences that feel like a treat because they provide access, intimacy or insight and not simply spectacle.
Four Seasons is taking reservations for stays from August 26, 2026. The hotel will open with its introductory collection of rooms and suites, with additional lodging to come. Looking past opening day, Four Seasons also says that the Danieli Spa will open in late 2026, with treatment rooms (at least one designed for couples) as well as a sauna and hammam. (That timeframe, incidentally, is what makes the property particularly enticing for travelers who want to pair something like a cultural deep dive into Venice with more visibly restorative hotel accommodations.
The Bottom Line: Why Danieli is Important – Especially Right Now
Venice is one of those places that can easily be all-consuming if you barrel through it like a list. The best trips materialize when you give the city space to unfold: a slow morning, a long lunch, that unplanned detour toward some quiet campo, the night that ends with one last walk along the water.
And that may be the most Venetian promise of all. Danieli’s new chapter doesn’t seek to reimagine the hotel as something it is not — rather, it sets out to restore its spirit and improve the experience for today’s traveler. The result is a landmark that feels gorgeously of the moment: still rich in history, still unmistakably glamorous, but also now lighter, quieter, and easier to live in — precisely the sort of place that causes Venice to linger with you long after you’ve left.