The Gritti Palace dates back to 1525 when its construction began. At first the official residence of the Gritti family, the palace was later used as the residence of the Vatican ambassadors to Venice. Later still, it was home to successive noble families, as the Pisanis and again the Grittis in 1814, when it was purchased by Camillo Gritti. Over the centuries it has had illustrious guests, as it was the habit for noble palaces. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the palace was converted into a hotel and annexed to the adjacent Grand Hotel. Following the Second World War, Compagnia Italiana Grandi Alberghi acquired the palace and, after important restoration works, the hotel officially opened on June 5th, 1948 as Hotel Gritti Palace. It soon became the favourite of intellectuals, artists and royalty. Among the many guests who enjoyed its exceptional hospitality feature Sir Winston Churchill, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Andr? Malraux, Igor and Vera Stravinsky, Luchino Visconti, and Orson Welles. Ernest Hemingway once described the hotel ?as the best hotel in a city of great hotels.? In the words of W. Somerset Maugham, ?There are few things in life more pleasant than to sit on the terrace of the Gritti when the sun about to set bathes in lovely colour the Salute, which almost faces you. You see that noble building at its best and the sight adds to your satisfaction. For at the Gritti you are not merely a number as you are in those vast caravanserais that are now being built all over the world; you are a friend who has been welcomed as he stepped out of his motor boat, and when you seat down to dinner at the very same table that you sat at the year before, and the year before that, when you see that your bottle of Soave is in the ice-pail, waiting for you, as it has been year after year, you cannot but feel very much at home.? .