Hotel of the Week: Locanda Cipriani Returns to Torcello
After a restoration led by the Cipriani family, the ten-key inn on Venice's oldest island reopens with interiors by Fabrizio Cocchi Studio
Torcello was the first island in the Venetian lagoon to be settled, sometime in the 5th century, eons before Venice existed. By the time Giuseppe Cipriani Sr. found it on a boat excursion in the 1930s, the island had shrunk to a scattering of families living among salt marshes and two ancient churches. He didn’t build anything grand. Instead, he bought a small wine and oil shop and turned it into an inn, officially opening in 1947.
The early guests of the original Locanda Cipriani read like a list of people who wanted, briefly, to disappear. Ernest Hemingway arrived one November in 1948 and stayed through the winter, spending his mornings hunting duck in the marshes and his evenings writing what would become Across the River and Into the Trees. His original writing desk survived the decades inside the inn, recognizable in old photographs from the period, and the restoration team preserved it as one of the property’s most storied original details, echoed now in a small writing table found in every room.
Winston Churchill came a few years later and painted a small watercolor of the lagoon that for decades hung just inside the restaurant’s door. There was no television then, no reception, no cell connection. But that was exactly the point Cipriani had in mind, a rustic inn built for escaping the world.
“The soul of a place, in this case Torcello and our Locanda, is timeless,” says Giuseppe Cipriani, President and CEO of Cipriani (also the son of Arrigo Cipriani and grandson of Giuseppe Sr.).
Arriving at Torcello has a certain mysticism to it, a slow boat ride into water that gets quieter the farther out you go. The inn’s facade comes into view first, brick red now, though for most of its recent history it was painted a bright yellow—until archival research during the restoration turned up the original color underneath. “The restoration sought to recover the original brick-red color, a decision that was developed in close collaboration with the local Heritage Authority, which oversaw the entire process,” says Cipriani. “As Locanda Cipriani is one of the most iconic buildings on the island of Torcello, every intervention was undertaken with the maximum respect for its historical, cultural, and environmental significance.”
Guests could be walking through those doors for the very first time, and it would still feel like arriving at a distant relative’s house mid-reunion, greeted like one had been away too long. A few of the staff came over from Harry’s Bar in Venice, which is part of why the whole experience feels blissfully familiar. Even before visitors reach for a passport to check in, a Bellini appears on a silver tray, carried over by a bartender in a white tuxedo jacket with a black bow tie, served in the house’s signature small glass, no ice. Some rituals, a restoration knows better than to touch.
Following the restoration, the inn reopened this past June as an intimate ten-key property, one of Venice’s most talked-about summer debuts and easily its smallest. “The vision was to facilitate a dialogue between history and the present, with discreet luxury and simplicity,” Cipriani says. The redesign, developed with Fabrizio Cocchi Studio, treats restraint as the whole point. Every room establishes a direct dialogue with its view with wall color driving the selection of marble utilized in the bath, upholstered furnishings, curtains, rugs, and the Ginori 1735 porcelain found in each room.
The ten rooms split into three moods. Downstairs, it’s deep marble and warm tones on one side, garden green on the other. Upstairs, everything shifts into blue, keyed to the water outside. Across those moods sit four kinds of accommodations: a single deluxe room off the canal, four garden suites opening straight onto the grounds, two canal suites (one red, one blue, divided across floors), and three Torcello suites, the largest of the group.
The Torcello suites are the most indulgent, each with its own living room, a private terrace, Juliet balconies (perfect for morning espresso and the complete silence of the island), and a view straight toward the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta and the Church of Santa Fosca. Sheets come in a choice of cotton or linen, some of the crispest and softest you’ll find, made exclusively for Cipriani. The slippers are oversized and pillowy. The robes are terry cloth, with a lighter weight option for lounging in-room without the added weight of fabric post-shower. The amenities go beyond the basics too, down to a mini Not Just A Sun Cream tube from the South Tyrol skincare line Not Just Bodycare and tailored turn-down amenities—not just another chocolate square on the pillow.
In the restaurant, three original decorative friezes uncovered during the restoration now sit in dedicated, lit niches. The property’s fireplace, a fixture longtime guests still ask after, now sits within a newly designed cove that will reportedly return to the same beloved, roaring version, only better. The interior doors, custom-made and hand-lacquered by Bertolotto, a signature Cipriani touch, catch the light the way a boat hull does, shifting slightly as the sun moves across the room over the course of the day. The entire project, the team says, blends historical preservation with quintessentially Cipriani design instincts, favoring materials built to last over anything trend-driven.
The bellini on arrival isn’t a hospitality flourish borrowed for the occasion: Giuseppe Cipriani Sr. invented the drink himself, at Harry’s Bar in 1948—blending fresh Veneto white peach purée with Prosecco, naming it for the pink cast in a Giovanni Bellini painting he couldn’t stop thinking about. Decades later, his family opened Harry’s Dolci on Giudecca, a quieter outpost with water views and the same old-fashioned charm.
The kitchen draws almost entirely from the lagoon and the property’s own garden. Castraure, the small purple artichokes grown on nearby Sant’Erasmo, appear early in the season alongside moeche, the soft-shell crabs fishermen harvest during their brief molt. A risotto made with vegetables from the Locanda’s garden and a salad of beans, tomato, and anchovy sauce round out a menu built around the seasons—along with the capelonghe, the lagoon’s native razor clam.
Table service here still follows the Cipriani way, and it feels like a small trip back in time. In the morning, the way to go is Colazione Torcello, one of Venice’s most indulgent breakfasts, especially outside on a warm day with nothing but the cicadas as the only backdrop sound.
Torcello has fewer than a dozen full-time residents today, by some counts just seven people and four cats. It is the version of Venice that existed before Venice as people know it now did, and for most of a century, the only way to actually stay there overnight has been through this address.
“A night at Locanda, where each room has its own character, allows you to experience the privilege of silence, a slower pace, and forgotten flavors—an essence we want to return to every time we can,” Cipriani says. If travelers were already a fan of the tranquil escape before, they will love it even more now.