Entering the Hotel Pensione Accademia in Venice is like returning to the splendours of the Serenissima. The Villa Maravege still preserves traces of its origins as a seventeenthcentury aristocratic residence. An atmosphere adored by Josif Brodsky, the Nobel laureate in Literature in 1987, and other guests of international renown, such as Sir Laurence Olivier and Marcello Mastroianni. Since the 1950s, the Pensione Accademia has been run by the Salmaso family, who have preserved all the charm of the warm, welcoming rooms of the Villa, one of the few hotels in Venice to have no fewer than two gardens.