“If I were not King of France, I would choose to be a citizen of Venice,” Henri III, enraptured by the city’s beauty, said when he visited it in 1574. Centuries later, the French hotel group Airelles has chosen La Serenissima for its first property outside France: Airelles Palladio.
Occupying three 16th-century structures on tranquil Giudecca Island—the main Palladio building, Villa Frollo, and the church of Santa Maria della Presentazione—the hotel is instantly recognizable by the church’s great dome, which rises above the jumble of colorful houses that flank the water. From here, the view stretches across the blue-green waters of the lagoon to the delicate pink-and-white Venetian Gothic façade of the Doge’s Palace on one side, and past the Campanile and St. Mark’s Square to the 17th-century baroque Santa Maria della Salute on the other.
