Palazzo Nani spent four centuries as a Venetian noble seat on the Cannaregio Canal before reopening in 2022 as the Radisson Collection’s Venice flag, and the restoration was done with unusual restraint: frescoes and stucco conserved, stone left to speak, contemporary furniture kept low and quiet beneath them. There are 52 rooms and suites, and the piano nobile rooms, with painted ceilings above the bed and windows onto the canal, are the ones to hold out for. Water taxis deliver you to the canal-side entrance, which remains the correct way to arrive anywhere in this city.
Cannaregio is the other half of the argument. This is working Venice: the Jewish Ghetto and its bacari a few minutes away, the Guglie vaporetto stop by the bridge, Santa Lucia station ten minutes on foot. San Marco’s crowds are a fifteen-minute walk and a full temperament away, which is precisely the point.
The garden courtyard, where the bar and restaurant spill out in fine weather, is a luxury almost no Venetian hotel can offer, and the kitchen treats Venetian classics with a light hand. It is not cheap, but against the palazzo hotels of the Grand Canal it looks almost reasonable, and it puts you in the Venice most visitors never quite find.
