Hemingway said that this was ‘the best hotel in a city of great hotels’ and here he thought up and wrote most of his Across the River and Into the Trees. Somerset Maugham loved the view from his suite at sunset. A splendid sixteenth-century palace on the Grand Canal, the Gritti preserves the history of the British royal family, of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the princes of Monaco and the stars of Hollywood. All pampered like royalty in opulent Louis XV interiors, with the delicacies of the ‘grande cuisine’ that the old chefs learnt from the great Escoffier. Over a year’s painstaking restoration returned it, in 2013, to its original splendour.