A spa in a city that has never had a Dior spa. A Michelin-starred dining room rebuilt around the colour gold. The Cipriani has been quietly redoing itself, and the next pages are now open.
Hotel Cipriani sits on its own slice of the Giudecca, with a boat to San Marco that runs all day and night. Belmond has been working through the property in phases since 2024, under the architect Peter Marino. The first phase delivered a luminous double-height lobby and thirteen redesigned suites. The second phase, opening this spring, brings two larger pieces of the puzzle into place.
The first is the Dior Spa, the first in Venice. The second is a reimagined Oro, the hotel's Michelin-starred restaurant, now under the culinary direction of Massimo Bottura with Vania Ghedini as executive chef.
The spa
Marino designed the spa as a sequence of small rooms rather than one large floor. The reference points are Venetian, with the grandeur of the city's old balls held against Christian Dior's lifelong attraction to art and beauty. The materials lean to mirrored glass, stone, and warm panelling. Light arrives by lantern and reflection, not by window.
The treatment menu blends high-technology facials with the Dior signature rituals. Holistic therapies and wellness sessions sit alongside them. The point of difference is the location, on an island with no traffic, a few minutes from the cluster of palazzi on the Grand Canal.
Hotel Cipriani gardens, Giudecca · Courtesy of Belmond
The dining room
Oro has been built around a single idea, gold, in homage to the city it sits in. Marino dropped custom plates and table objects through the dining room, all in gold-leaf and burnished metal. The room is theatrical without being loud, which has always been the Marino balance.
Bottura comes in as culinary director after three Michelin stars at Osteria Francescana in Modena. Ghedini, who came up through his kitchens, runs the day. The new menu pulls Venetian ingredients across an Italian-Italian grammar, with quiet nods to the lagoon. Oro now serves lunch for the first time, which is the small operational change that changes the rhythm of a stay.
A house already famous for its garden and pool gets a second front door, this one made of gold leaf.
The Splendid EditThe rest of the Cipriani stays in place. The pool, the largest in Venice and salt-water, remains the social heart of the hotel. The fountain garden was reopened with the lobby work in 2024 and now connects through to the pool deck without a step. The Cip's Club at the end of the Giudecca runs as before, with its long view back to the Doge's Palace.
The Belmond move
Hotel Cipriani is the second Belmond property to add a Dior Spa this year. The first arrives at Grand Hotel Timeo in Taormina this summer, a different proposition in a different language. Both spas sit inside a wider Belmond strategy of fewer rooms, more programming, longer stays, which the company has been calling slow luxury for the better part of two years.
Venice is the trickier address to renew. The city is heavily inspected, lightly forgiven, and rarely silent about visiting designers. Marino has worked here before, on the Bauer Palazzo earlier in his career, and the Cipriani is the second long-term Venetian commission of his maturity.
The Cipriani has been here since 1958, opened on land Giuseppe Cipriani bought at the western end of the Giudecca after the war. It became a Belmond house in 2014. Most of its furniture has been seen by most of the people who matter; this is the rare hotel whose archive of guests is also a partial archive of the twentieth century. The Marino phases are the first full rework of the place in a generation.
The new Dior Spa and reimagined Oro restaurant are open at Hotel Cipriani, A Belmond Hotel, Venice. Reservations through belmond.com.
Photography courtesy of Belmond · Hotel Cipriani, Venice