Hotel Heureka occupies a 16th-century palazzo on the Madonna dell’Orto canal in Cannaregio. Inside are ten rooms that feel less like a hotel and more like a very well-dressed friend’s Venetian apartment, complete with original frescoes, exposed beams, velvet chairs, antique tapestries, and paintings by Austrian artist Julian Kohl (commissioned specifically for the walls). The Deluxe and Suite rooms have soaking tubs that sit under starlit bathroom ceilings and are stocked with L’Occitane amenities. Outside is a walled garden where breakfast is served on warmer days, and where you can sip a Select Spritz for an aperitivo before heading out for dinner. The clientele skews heavy on return visitors, which says everything.
Address: Fondamenta Gasparo Contarini, 3534, Cannaregio
Price: Rooms from around £230 per night
Combo Venice, Cannaregio
Though its labeled as a hostel, Combo Venice is far from your typical backpacking around Europe address. The bolthole is housed within the restored 12th-century Convento dei Crociferi, where the historic architecture is largely intact: long stone corridors, soaring ceilings, and beautiful frescoes preserved in the communal spaces, stairwells, and event areas throughout the property. The cloister, known as the Corte degli Aranci for its fragrant orange trees, doubles as a gathering point where even locals often join to drink a spritz. Private rooms and apartments have ensuite bathrooms and air conditioning, some even have kitchenettes. The Fondamenta Nove vaporetto stop is steps away, making island-hopping easy.
Address: Campo dei Gesuiti, Cannaregio 4878
Price: Rooms from around £85 per night
Oltre il Giardino, San Polo
Behind an unmarked dark green door on a dead-end canal street near the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari is a garden of olive, magnolia, and pomegranate trees, and the charming Oltre il Giardino. The large house originally belonged to Alma Mahler, a composer, muse, and one of early 20th-century Vienna’s most formidable figures, who bought it in 1922 and sold it, reluctantly, in 1935. Current owner Lorenzo Muner and his Franco-Venetian family run it as six rooms, each unique in their interiors and filled with Edwardian paintings, inherited objects, and the accumulated texture of a house that has been beautifully lived in. The drawing room has an honesty bar for evenings, and breakfast is served in the garden as late in the year as November, under the pomegranate tree.
Address: San Polo 2542, Fondamenta Contarini
Price: Rooms from around £210 per night.
