A post-Venetian receives her guests in a forest of roses weaving over Venini chandeliers.
A post-Venetian eats a quick toast in the company of a Pietà by Fabio Viale, another takes a relaxing bath in front of a work by Kounellis.
A vision that strongly departs from the idea of a nostalgic and somewhat sleepy Venice, quite on the contrary, the proposal of a new avant-garde.
From the will to renew a sense of openness and a drive for discovery comes a place where hospitality, art and design meet in a dialogue that sinks its roots in the city’s history while looking towards the future. Born from a project by Francesca Rinaldo and Alessandro Gallo and opened in February 2022, the Venice Venice hotel goes far beyond the traditional hotellerie.
The desire of the two founders was in fact to create a representative place of their ideas, which could house their private collection, be open to collaborations with designers and artists and bring to light the city's strong link with international contemporary art. The winning solution for the realisation of the project, which required a space with a concept of exchange and dynamism at its core, turned out to be a hotel.
The hotel is spread between two locations: Ca' da Mosto and Ca' Dolfin.
The latter, opening at the end of the year, will be reserved for rooms only, which will be the largest in the entire structure, and will have a more secluded access. Ca' da Mosto, on the other hand, with its water gate and Scarpa-esque entrance is the heart of Venice Venice.
The palace with the oldest Byzantine stone façade in Venice, overlooking the Grand Canal on the opposite bank from the Rialto market, reopens to the public, recovering and starting a new chapter in its history of hospitality after extensive renovation work.
The upper floors house the 45 rooms, while on the ground floor the sottoportego del Traghetto houses the M'Art.
Under this brand merge and interact in the same space, a restaurant, an art gallery, and two shops open also to an external public, reactivating the space traditionally used for commercial activities.
Distinctive features of the Venice Venice project are undoubtedly the curatorial attention placed on the composition of the spaces and the juxtaposition of the works chosen by Alessandro Gallo and Francesca Rinaldo with the collaboration of Bianca Bonaldi.
Hence, from the desire to convey their vision of Venetianness, alongside design objects and works of art by famous artists, with a logo combining the Venice bud, a work by Kounellis, and the dripping of spray cans used in street art, The Erose was born.
Designed by Gallo himself and realised by combining Venetian craftsmanship techniques and contemporary design forms, these productions pervade the rooms of the hotel, defining a shared feature and creating contras effects with the architecture of the palace and the works that inhabit it from different eras.
The narrative unfolds in an unprecedented way in the rooms. The Venice Venice is in fact a perfect example of a hotel where each room has its own precise curatorial project and where the founders personally supervise the choice of every single aspect of the furnishings.
Sharing The Erose's taste, the rooms are developed by juxtaposing works from the Gallo's private collection, or by selecting works from specific galleries, and in other cases by collaborating directly with artists.
All the pictures are courtesy of the Venice Venice Hotel and Bianca Bonaldi.
What also makes the experience of staying in the rooms unique is the possibility of purchasing, via the two shops, the artworks (originals, editions or reproductions) and The Erose-branded furniture pieces.Every room in the Venice Venice is designed to experience “postvenezianità”.
The private lounge in room 24, dedicated to Arte Povera, features a star by Gilberto Zorio. The work, on waxed cardboard with Stromboli sand and luminescent material, imposingly occupies an entire wall opposite the sofa, magnetically drawing every gaze to itself.
To welcome at the top of the staircase leading from the water gate to the common room, a site-specific mirror by POL Polloniato created after the discovery of a more than 500-year-old clay deposit in the foundations of Ca' da Mosto. Using this unique material and Antonibon's eighteenth-century moulds, the artist created a frame that he then went on to segment and recompose, creating an unprecedented solution.
A contemporary work that draws on the traditions of Venetian mirrors, a creation that was born from the palazzo itself, a mirror in which to see oneself reflected and through which to activate a reflection on a Venice moving through the ravines of time, a hymn to “postvenezianità”.
