A Summary History of the Palazzo Dandolo | Page 4

of the apartments have been preserved in the original style, especially the Saloon of the Doges, No. 9, which with the adjoining rooms, Nos. 10, 11 and 12, all of which overlook the Riva degli Schiavoni and the magnificent panorama already described.
The wines and the table are a great speciality of the Hotel Royal Danieli, all being of the very highest order, and its dining rooms and restaurant arranged with small and separate tables, have an unusual character all their own.
The dining rooms are decorated in an entirely novel style and one that is truly poetic. The great windows of ground glass are transformed into eight lovely winter gardens of rare plants, which are reproduced in the big mirrors which line the walls, and the electric light, which hangs in delicate Venetian glass lily pendants round the ceiling, produces a most charming and unusual effect.
The two great restaurant halls are furnished in pure style of the Empire, for all the stuffs and decorations are copied from the best works that treat of that period, and are among the richest and choicest of that famous epoch.
Thus, by a series of ingenious combinations these two palaces, so different from each other in many ways, blend themselves in one harmonious and artistic whole, and in them are united the greatest luxury with the utmost comfort.
[Illustration: SALON OF THE DOGES]
To give an idea of the whole we will imagine that a traveler is staying in the apartment of the Doge--which recalls all the pomp and grandeur of old Venice--to go to the breakfast-room and restaurant we will pass through the great Sansovino ball-room, then through the Rose saloon, by the side of which is the music-room (style Empire), and the gallery of tapestry and majolica, and thus reaches the Empire decorated restaurants which we have already described.
In the evening at dinner-time the traveler would, instead, descend by successive steps, through a Renaissance vestibule, to the beautiful winter garden dining-halls, which, especially when lit up by the soft radiance of the electric lilies, makes a perfect fairy scene.
Round the ball-room on the first floor runs an uncovered loggia, from whence one can look down into the court of honor, or Venetian Atrium, in which of an evening characteristic concerts are frequently given. From the first floor the great ?scala d'oro? conducts one to the second floor, where are the spacious concert-room and various handsome suites of ancient and modern apartments.
To the honor of the proprietors who have succeeded one another, be it said, that although from time to time certain works have been executed in this historic palace to adapt it to its new use as a hotel, yet not only have the staircases, the saloons and the various apartments been preserved just as they were, but the artistic beauties and the historic souvenirs have been carefully respected, the stuccoes and frescoes of the sixteenth and seventeenth century have been spared, and the portraits and heraldic shields of the Dandolos, the Bernardos and the Mocenigos can still be admired to-day in their original positions.
Although the use to which this Palace, which once occupied so large a place in the glories of the history of Venice, has been put during the present century is very different from that which it was built, it has always been kept most worthily, first by Danieli, then by his daughter Alfonsina, the wife of Vespasiano Muzzarelli; then by his granddaughter, Giuseppina Roux, and, last, by S.S. Genovesi and Campi, so that it had the honor, which it still possesses, of being chosen by Emperors, Kings, Princes and Ambassadors, and by great men of all countries whose artistic travels bring them to this incomparable city, so justly called the ?Pearl of the Adriatic?.
The delightful impression made on those who inhabit the Hotel Royal Danieli has been expressed over and over again to their friends, and they have often said to the proprietors that they have rather felt as if visiting in the house of a friend, or in a princely mansion, than in an hotel, even though in the greatest hotel in the world.
[Illustration: SANSOVINO HALL]
In this lovely palace the traveler feels at home. All is artistic and poetical. No long passages, painted in imitation marble, cold and draughty, and dreary! No long endless tables and big red velvet divans, as in a cafe! No long rows of rooms in which the furniture is so much alike that you cannot tell if you are in your own room or someone else's! Here is nothing conventional, nothing that is to be seen everywhere--whether among the mountains of Switzerland or on the boulevards of Paris, and which makes the traveler's life monotonous wherever he may be. Here, on the contrary, he finds himself in an atmosphere of home, of comfort, and of suitability