Hotel of the Week: Architect Aline Asmar d’Amman Reawakens a Forgotten Venetian Palazzo for Orient Express
For nearly six centuries, Palazzo Donà Giovannelli kept its doors closed, hidden from the public; now, it's been reborn as a dazzling destination on the Rio di Noale
Cannaregio resists the postcard version of Venice. Its canals are quieter, its streets less worn by tourism. It’s also where Orient Express has landed, not on the Grand Canal, not near San Marco, but on the Rio di Noale, behind a pale pink facade punctuated by seven finely carved Gothic windows.
Aline Asmar d’Amman, the Beirut-born, Paris-formed architect behind the hotel’s eight-year transformation, describes her creative process in terms that have nothing to do with mood boards. “I live inhabited with words,” she says. “My music is the sentences of all the authors I read about Venice—from Ruskin, who says the stones of Venice are the flesh of time, to Proust, who says that when he arrives in Venice, he finds that his dream has become his address. And then Proust again, who says he wants to transform into a fabric, just to be a garment from Fortuny.”
Palazzo Donà Giovannelli has been many things across its nearly six centuries of life. Built in 1436, it passed through the hands of the Duke of Urbino and later the Giovannelli family, each leaving their mark on its salons and facades. Its most consequential transformation came in the mid-19th century, when Count Andrea Giovannelli commissioned architect Giovanni Battista Meduna, then simultaneously restoring the neighboring Ca’ d’Oro, to reimagine the interiors entirely. Meduna added neo-Gothic form, Arabesque detail, and what remains the palazzo’s most theatrical gesture: an octagonal staircase crowned by a celestial vault. In 1847, its salons filled with scholars and dignitaries for the Ninth Congress of Italian Scientists. It has not been open to the public, in any form, until now.
Orient Express Venezia is the brand’s second Italian property, following La Minerva in Rome, and its opening is the product of a restoration that was, by any measure, extreme. If you know La Minerva, don’t expect any striking similarities…the properties are like night and day, in the best way, with two completely different identities.
Asmar d’Amman worked with historians, heritage conservation specialists, and over 300 master artisans in close collaboration with Italy’s Soprintendenza over the renovation’s span. Every mosaic, fresco, and stucco was preserved. “Every week I would come over, and every week there’s a layer that is discovered, or you see just a piece of something appearing,” says Asmar d’Amman. “And then you know that when you come back the week after, you’re going to see the rest of the story.”
Guests arrive by private boat through the Gothic water gate on the canal, through the secret garden from Santa Fosca, or off the Strada Nova through a 15th-century Gothic door. All paths lead to the Corte del Conte, the former open mineral courtyard transformed into the palazzo’s grand living room and lobby, anchored by pietra d’istria stone tables, gold-leaf Murano glass chandeliers, and a pair of 19th-century sculpted lions replicating a study by Canova.
“As architects, we write with materials as authors would write with ink and paper,” says Asmar d’Amman. “Architecture is not here to just embellish and decorate. It’s here to spark joy, to connect people with shared emotions, to reveal stories, and to bring them to life.”
The energy is deliberately calibrated to feel less like a hotel lobby and more like arriving at someone’s exceptionally well-appointed home, where books and objects accumulate like a private collection, and you sink into a sofa before you’ve even reached your room.
From here, Meduna’s octagonal staircase spirals upward to the Piano Nobile, where the Sala della Cultura presents a lapis-lazuli painted ceiling crossed by golden cordons framing noble family crests, and the Sala della Musica, its ceiling so meticulously restored that, as Asmar d’Amman notes, “every flower was completely detached, restored, and put back into place. It seems absolutely natural today to walk into this room and see the perfection of its state, even though it does still hold the patina of time,” she says.
Of the 47 rooms, suites, and residences, the six signature suites carry the greatest narrative weight. Restored during Meduna’s mid-19th-century intervention, the Orient Express Suite’s grand salon is graced by paintings from both Antonio Zona and Giovanni Busato, above walls dressed in silk moiré and carved beams with gilded detail. In the bedroom, a couture canopy crowns the king-sized bed, Murano chandeliers scatter light overhead, and a restored corner window frames the canal below.
In the suites, there’s a nod to Georgia O’Keeffe. “My family emigrated to the US during the war in Lebanon, and one of my favorite museums is the National Gallery in Washington,” says Asmar d’Amman. “That’s where I had the most striking discoveries of the world of Georgia O’Keeffe—to whom I dedicated a furniture collection of round-shaped, sensuous sofas named ‘Georgia,’ as a tribute to her. These pieces are found in the signature suites, naturally conversing with the feminine allegories and figures in the historic decor.”
In the Colori Persi Suite, named for Venice’s lost colors, Eugenio Moretti Larese’s 1860 NeoRococo ceiling unfurls above the canopy bed. A fresco of Venus, Cupid, and the Three Graces surrounded by genii in flight bearing flowers and emblems of the Arts is so vivid that Asmar d’Amman let its palette spill directly into the furnishings below. The Georgia sofas stand alongside original 1920s chairs by Paul Follot, still wildly comfortable, sourced at auction from the Bourse de Commerce in Paris.
In a palazzo this considered, the dining rooms were never going to be an afterthought. The culinary vision belongs to Heinz Beck, who earned three Michelin stars at La Pergola in Rome. The chef’s eagerly anticipated fine dining concept, Heinz Beck Venezia, opens this July in the former palazzo orangerie beneath hand-pleated veils created in collaboration with Atelier Lemarié Lognon, from le19M, Chanel’s métiers d’art, evoking the movement of Venetian fans above the dining tables.
“These veils evoke the poetic movement of the iconic Venetian accessory, adding rhythm, whimsy, and a spectacular couture allure, a nod to the delicatesse of chef Heinz Beck’s Michelin-studded plate,” says Asmar d’Amman.
La Casati takes its name from the avant-garde Marchesa Luisa Casati, who famously declared she wanted to be a living work of art and kept a cheetah on a leash through the streets of Venice. The all-day restaurant opens onto a private garden beneath bespoke chandeliers in faded celadon, amber, and pink, where Loro Piana-designed fabrics dress the outdoor furniture.
The Wagon Bar sits behind a majestic wooden door, its interior a moody tribute to the original Orient Express railcar lounges. Polished wood, brushed brass, a floor patterned after the geometry of Ca’ d’Oro, and antique mirrors reflecting Philip Andelman’s photography of Venice set a mood that is equal parts Art Deco and intrigue. Bar manager Francesco Adragna works with local products and spirits to create decadent cocktails, among them the Lagoon Negroni, a house signature built on local bitter, local red vermouth, and a gin infused with santonico herb, Treviso tardive radicchio, saffron, and a hint of mandarin.
“I hope for guests to be touched by the grace of [Orient Express Venezia’s] undying youth, a fuel to the sense of wonderment present in every surface and space, but also the feeling of cinematic progression,” says Asmar d’Amman. “A great discovery, where one moves through layers of history, unearthing fragments of the past that reveal themselves gradually, often in unexpected ways. Exactly what Venice is all about—mystery, drama and celebration, set between stone and waves, movement and eternity.”