Three star Continental Hotel Venice Italy, which once belonged to the noble Venetian Frizier family, has been recently renovated, making it one of the great hotel deals within Cannaregio sestieri / Jewish Ghetto.
If you’re coming to Venice with a train (and with several heavy luggages!), the hotel’s location is ideal — just 200 meters from S. Lucia train station.
You can choose from a total of 93 air-conditioned rooms (singles, doubles, and triple rooms), many priced so that they are suitable even for tight-budget travelers.
The rooms are large in Venetian standards, and several of them even offer great views to the Grand Canal, the main waterway through Venice.
As for facilities, the hotel has a restaurant, open until late at night (so you can relax after a day sightseeing), with views of Grande Canale.
For the most romantic setting, use the tables at the terrace and request candle-lightning.
The restaurant’s menu features Venetian cuisine specialties, with a selection of Italian, international, and regional Venetian wines.
If you don’t feel like going out for dinner, the hotel has room service as an alternative.
PHOTO: The hotel’s restaurant terrace has amazing views to the neighboring Grande Canale. The corner table, pictured, is especially romantic setting for evenings, when you can arrange a candlelight dinner here.
PHOTO: View to one of Continental Hotel’s Canal View Rooms. You need to book specifically a room with a canal view to get this type of accommodation.
As for location, being in the sestieri of Cannaregio, you need to travel a bit (20-30 minutes by waterbus, the closest stop is “Ferrovia”) to get to the major tourist attractions…
…such as Accademia art museum or Saint Mark’s square. You can also get a water taxi directly to the hotel’s canal entrance.
However, next door, there are several interesting sights, such as Palazzo Labia and Ca’ Vendramin Calergi, composer Richard Wagner’s house in Venice (and whose living quarters are now a museum).
The hotel located in Lista di Spagna, next door to Strada Nova, one of Venice’s main pedestrian streets, leading to Rialto. Along the way, you’ll find a cavalcade of shops and markets (especially at Ponte delle Guglie).
Continental Hotel Reviews
Continental Hotel reviews are plentiful, thanks to the popularity of the accommodation, being right on Canal Grand and next door to the S. Lucia train station.
I prefer to read reviews from two main locations: Booking.com and TripAdvisor.com, both of which I’ve found to have the most authentic reviews…
…plus the amount of reviews is often more than enough.
For Continental Hotel (at the time of writing this)…
- TripAdvisor had 279 reviews, ranking it #323 out of 433 hotels in Venice (for a rating of 3/5), and
- Booking.com had 418 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10
Looking at the reviews from TripAdvisor, they are a bit mixed, with some customers having been very satisfied, and then some not as much.
From the feedback, the hotel get high marks especially for location:
- being handy to shops,
- being right on the Grande Canale, and
- just 5 minutes to Santa Lucia station.
According to the feedback, you need to book specifically a Canal View Room, to get the ones with views to the main Venetian canal.
As for Booking.com, the feedback positives include the hotel having large rooms, some even with great balconies.
Also, some of the feedback gives thumbs up to the breakfast, and for the hotel restaurant’s sweeping balcony views to the Grand Canal.
Continental Hotel Deals
Continental Hotel deals are available from the official website, plus you might find deals from some of their booking partners, including Booking.com.
As for the official website, at www.hotelcontinentalvenice.com, you can make a reservation directly from the site, by clicking the link for “Booking”.
The new window that opens will list any available promotions, plus there is a place to insert a discount code, if you have received such a code (travel agents often provide these codes).
At the time of writing this, for example, Continental offers early booking discounts, for 30 day and 60 day advance bookings, but under normal conditions & no prepayment.
You might also find good deals through Booking.com, where they are listed as one of the hotels in Venice Cannaregio area. At the time of writing this, Continental did not have any special deals on Booking.com.
However, Continental was listed as being part of the website’s “Preferred Hotels Programme”, which I’ve found to mean that such partner hotels often make (exclusive) pricing promotions through Booking.com.
Continental Hotel Website
To get to know the hotel, you have several venues to do so online.
For one, there’s the official Continental Hotel Venice Italy website, available through URL at www.hotelcontinentalvenice.com.
At the official website, you can…
- make a booking,
- browse through the restaurant’s menu,
- read about the building’s history, and
- much more.
The website also has a live Venice webcam, with which you can take a look at the immediate hotel surroundings, especially at what is happening within the “downstream” part Grand Canal right now.
Apart from the main website, Continental Hotel also has several social media pages, including…
- Facebook: Facebook.com/pages/Hotel-Continental-Venice/167489279968600
- Flickr: Flickr.com/people/hotelcontinental
Of these, the Facebook page has a lot of great pictures of Continental, about the views from the restaurant to the Grand Canal, room photos, and an overview of the lobby area.