Two centuries at the Danieli

It was 1822 when a young Giuseppe Dal Niel from Friuli arrived in Venice seeking his fortune, and rented part of Palazzo Dandolo, a Venetian Gothic style building built in the late 1300s as the residence of Doge Andrea Dandolo, and converted it into a hotel, first baptizing it “nuovo hotel Reale” and later with his nickname “Danieli”, immediately well received by the sophisticated ear of travelers on the Grand Tour. This was the very start of the iconic Danieli hotel, the oldest continuously operating hotel in Venice, made up of Palazzo Dandolo as well as two other separate buildings connected by covered bridges: Palazzo Casa Nuova, from the 19th century, formerly the headquarters of the treasury, and Palazzo Danieli Excelsior, from the 20th century with the neoclassical facade designed by the architect Virgilio Vallot.  

“Right from the start,” says Claudio Staderini, General Manager of the Hotel owned since 2005 by the Italian Gruppo Statuto and since 2016 managed by Marriott International, under the brand The Luxury Collection, “Danieli played a key role in hospitality in Venice. It was the hotel par excellence because it is next to the Doge's Palace and because it is the first you reached when the port was in the San Marco basin. Royalty such as the King of Prussia feature in the gold book of the first guests. In 1934, the French writer and playwright George Sand and the poet Alfred de Musset disembarked in front of the Danieli and took up residence in Room 10, where a plaque is still affixed today that recalls their passionate and stormy love affair.”

It was again a room in the very luxurious hotel that, a few decades later, witnessed the start of the relationship between Eleonora Duse and Gabriele D'Annunzio. And how can we forget the love at first sight between Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis in 1957, during a party organized by Elsa Maxwell precisely at the Danieli? “The soprano,” continues Claudio, “in a troubled time had escaped from Milan and had come to Venice to visit Maxwell, her friend and famous American journalist, while Onassis had his yacht moored in the San Marco basin.” Its rooms, rich in stuccoes and gold, were chosen by a variety of high-sounding names from literature and the international jet set: from Truman Capote to Nelson Mandela, Greta Garbo to Yoko Ono and Eugenio Montale whose poem L’abbiamo rimpianto a lungo l’infilascarpe (We’d long missed the shoehorn) affirms the value and exclusivity of the hotel where he is certain to have lost his tin shoehorn, surely found by the waitress Hedia and made to disappear also out of respect for the guest at the “Canalazzo”. An object that is not in keeping with the prestige of a hotel where, in suites like the Doge Dandolo, you can fall asleep while admiring the canvases by Ermolao Paoletti or gazing at a fresco by the student of Tiepolo, Jacopo Guarana.  

Names and faces that, starting in June and through to October 2022, come to life in the common areas of the three buildings of the Danieli in the photographic exhibition ‘Hotel Danieli 1822-2022’, an evocative exhibition of 80 historical images of the hotel and some of its most famous guests, taken from celebrated archives (Alinari Archives, the Fondo Fotografico Tomaso Filippi IPAV Venezia, the Archivio Luce, the National Galleries of Scotland, the Getty's Open Content Program and the Archivio fotografico Giacomelli - Municipality of Venice). “But it is also the link with film that upholds Danieli's image,” explains Claudio.  

A liaison cultivated even before the advent of the International Film Festival, “The Lumière brothers already stayed at the Danieli,” which we can then see in so many films whose memorable scenes are set in the fifteenth-century rooms of the hotel. “For example, Moonraker (1979) with Roger Moore, but also The Tourist by Florien Hunckel von Donnersmarck (2010), or The Journey, the last film directed by De Sica which stars Sophia Loren and Richard Burton. 

A liaison cultivated even before the advent of the International Film Festival, “The Lumière brothers already stayed at the Danieli,” which we can then see in so many films whose memorable scenes are set in the fifteenth-century rooms of the hotel. “For example, Moonraker (1979) with Roger Moore, but also The Tourist by Florien Hunckel von Donnersmarck (2010), or The Journey, the last film directed by De Sica which stars Sophia Loren and Richard Burton. 

Today, on the eve of the 79th edition of the festival, this relationship is only made closer. Indeed, everything is ready at the Danieli for the gala evening that has celebrated the start of thirteen editions of the Venice Film Festival. This year, on 30 September, a private party called CINEMA DANIELI An Unforgettable Love Story will invite 200 carefully selected guests to the Danieli terrace to celebrate the launch of the 79th International Film Festival, organized by the Venice Biennale, but the Bicentenary of the Danieli and the American actress Julianne Moore, nominated this year as president of the jury. The head Barman of the Hotel Danieli Roberto Naccari has created a special cocktail ‘Lioness Julianne’ to her, based on Creme de Violetta and Prosecco Superiore Bisol1542. And there will be the celebratory cocktail ‘Rosso Danieli’, created for the 200th anniversary of the Hotel, which combines gin and vermouth with drops of bitter and infusion of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, garnished with mint and orange.

The gourmet menu created by chef Fol will include dishes that recall the Venice of the past: a champagne risotto accompanied by the Chioggiotta fish soup and the great baccalà (salted cod), Bellini prawns and and a delicious milk and berry ice cream and timeless classics, such as sour cream blinis and Calvisius caviar, foie gras with grape must and floral salad and the famous sea bass in salt with dill foam and beef Wellington.