The Molino Stucky is the building Venice was never supposed to have: a vast neo-Gothic flour mill in Hanseatic brick, built in 1895 for the industrialist Giovanni Stucky to designs by the German architect Ernst Wullekopf, looming over the western end of Giudecca like a transplant from Hamburg. Milling stopped in 1955 and the shell sat derelict for half a century before Hilton reopened it in 2007. The conversion kept the ironwork, the timber beams and the silhouette, and filled the mill with 379 rooms and suites, making it one of the largest hotels on the lagoon.
The headline acts sit on the roof: the only rooftop swimming pool in Venice and the Skyline Bar, whose terrace at sunset, with the whole city laid out across the Giudecca Canal, is worth the trip even if you sleep elsewhere. Below, the eforea spa is among the city’s biggest, and Bacaromi does a proper Venetian cicchetti-and-spritz routine that saves you a crossing on lazy evenings.
Giudecca is the trade-off and, we would argue, the reward. You are a shuttle boat or a Palanca vaporetto from San Marco, which removes spontaneity but also removes the crowds: evenings here are washing lines, fishing boats and locals at the bacaro. Conference traffic is real, since the hotel houses one of Venice’s biggest congress centres, so check what is in the building when you book. For space, facilities and that skyline, it is a seriously clever way to do Venice.
