Hilton Molino Stucky Venice
Approach Giudecca by water and one building refuses to be missed. Where the island’s low rooflines give way to the lagoon, the former Molino Stucky rises in red brick and neo-gothic stone – a 19th century flour mill turned five-star hotel, distinctive among the palazzi across the water. Once one of Venice’s most celebrated industrial buildings, it is now among the city’s most striking silhouettes. Schön! alive made the crossing to explore its reinvention over a long, leisurely lunch.
The story begins in 1884, when the Venetian entrepreneur Giovanni Stucky, born in 1843 to a family of Swiss origin, commissioned the German architect Ernst Wullekopf to raise a flour mill on Giudecca. What started as a single red-brick block grew, by 1895, into something far grander: a soaring neo-gothic tower and ornate façade that established the Molino Stucky as one of the most beautiful mills in Europe. At its height, it operated as an engine that never idled, some 1,500 workers labouring around the clock to turn out 50 tonnes of flour a day, alongside the mill’s own celebrated Super Pasta Stucky. Stucky himself became a Venetian legend – one of the city’s great industrialists, murdered in 1910. The wars and mainland competition that followed proved less romantic. The mill fell silent in 1955 and stood derelict for more than half a century, a ruin of ivy and underbrush, before a careful restoration returned it to life as a hotel in 2007.
View of the rooftop swimming pool
The building that reopened kept faith with its past. Restorers preserved the mill’s industrial bones and neo-gothic character, weaving modern luxury into brick and iron, not over it. Today Hilton Molino Stucky Venice holds 379 rooms and suites, one of the largest spas in the city, and an award-winning conference centre. Its Presidential Suite – the highest and largest in Venice – opens straight onto the rooftop, where a swimming pool looks out over the city. If any theme takes precedence here, it is scale. Yet the setting feels the opposite of grandiose: Giudecca is the calm counterweight to Venice’s crowds, a short, frequent shuttle ride from the bustle of St Mark’s but a world away in pace.
The best view of that contrast is from the top. The Skyline Rooftop Bar – the highest in Venice – looks out across the vista from a terrace that catches the light at every hour. It is here that the hotel has just unveiled its new signature cocktail menu, ‘Shades of Venice’. Less a drinks list than a portrait of the city, the collection is built around six colours, each tied to a particular Venetian place and moment. Rubra draws on the deep reds of the city’s palaces, all pomegranate and warm spice; Solara bottles Venice in full sun, with pineapple, coconut and a whisper of bitterness; Vespro is an ode to the lagoon’s sunsets, sweet and faintly spiced. Within each colour sit three drinks of rising intensity – running from alcohol-free to deep and after-dinner – a few poured with the hotel’s own gin. The invitation is simple: to take Venice one cocktail, one colour and one sunset at a time.
‘Shades of Venice’ cocktails at Skyline Rooftop Bar
Downstairs, the kitchens have been busy too. Aromi, the hotel’s fine dining restaurant, has reopened for the season – from May until the end of September – with a new menu from executive chef Ivan Fargnoli, served in an intimate, canal side room that fills with live music on summer evenings. Fargnoli frames each course as part of a ‘Chef’s Tale’, a narrative built from memory and travel. It shows in dishes such as Squid Tagliolini with ginger dashi and Kaluga caviar, or Sea Urchin Spaghetti with yuzu kosho bisque, and in tasting menus that read like itineraries: ‘Eastern Depths’, ‘Land Encounters’, ‘Lagoon Garden’ and the seven-course ‘Silk Road’. “Aromi is about storytelling through flavour,” says Fargnoli. “Every dish reflects my experiences across cultures and my passion for combining Italian excellence with Asian influences.”
Ricciola Hamachi at Aromi restaurant
For something more relaxed, Rialto sits at the heart of the hotel: an all-day bar and restaurant serving Italian and international plates from noon until late. In the warmer months its tables spill out to the Rialto Garden, beneath cheerful red-and-white parasols – the easy, unhurried counterpart to Aromi’s formality.
Beyond the table, the hotel turns Venice itself into the amenity. Its concierge can arrange a private water-taxi ride to a Murano glass-making workshop, a gondola gliding the back canals, or a boat tour out to the lagoon islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello.
Hilton Molino Stucky Venice is a lot to take in, and yet the lasting impression is not of its scale but its light – the same light the cocktail menu chases, scattering across the lagoon and the old brick as the shuttle boats come and go. Arrive by water taxi, as most guests do, and the former mill reveals itself slowly: industry turned to calm, a working past remade as a view. It is, in every sense, a different shade of Venice – and, once you’ve have crossed the water, you may never want to leave.
View from the Presidential Suite
Find out more about Hilton Molino Stucky Venice here.
words. Olivia Cichero
edit. Huma Humayun
images. Courtesy of Hilton Molino Stucky Venice
