Island life at Giudecca

10 April 2012

THAT volcano has a lot to answer for in the consequences of its seemingly endless plume of ash. But without it we would never have discovered Giudecca, the island that curves like a fishbone along Venice's lagoon.

With no easy route out of Istria post-
volcano, our family headed up to Venice by car to await our flight home, by luck finding ourselves on Giudecca. It is actually eight separate islands connected by a network of bridges, and was once an affluent retreat for nobles in exile — Michelangelo spent three years exiled here from 1529.

Rich with Jewish traders in the 12th and 13th centuries, the area later became rundown and almost slum-like, with narrow alleys and derelict buildings.

Thanks to the municipality Giudecca Project, the neighbourhood is growing culturally and architecturally, with modern residential complexes making it fashionable again for intellectuals and artists (as it was centuries ago). Docklands-style glamorous apartments have sprung up in former bomb factories, and Elton John owns an apartment in a 17th-century palazzo here.

Giudecca is like a secret Venice, its cool squares, churches and trattorias the perfect respite from the touristy crowds of San Marco.

Largely a working-class and residential area, it reminded me of Shoreditch — with added water. Having lived in Hackney for so long, Guidecca began to feel like home to me.

The waterfront, or fondamenta, alongside the canal is lined with restaurants, cafés, art galleries, delicatessens, pharmacies, toy shops and small supermarkets. It is a real place, devoid of the overpriced tacky souvenir stalls and rip-off restaurants that dominate so much of Venice nowadays.

An unlikely sign of the times is the new Hilton hotel, where we stayed. This isn't your average Hilton. The Hilton Molino Stucky Venice, which opened two years ago, dominates the waterfront on the western side of Giudecca.

I actually found it surprisingly beautiful when spotting it as our water taxi rounded the corner of the canal. Sympathetically restored, the neo-Gothic red-brick façade of this former flour mill exudes warmth despite its proportions.

Italian entrepreneur Giovanni Stucky originally built the factory in 1884 on the ruins of the Convent and Church of St Biagio and Cataldo.

Sadly, the one prosperous mill declined after the Second World War and the death of Stucky, finally closing in 1955.

Inside, reminders of the building's history lie in the steel girders in the public spaces or the timber beams on show in the bedrooms. The Venetian touches are there — obligatory Murano chandeliers, Fortuny lamps and Rubelli fabrics.

The Espace Spa, the largest in Venice (naturally), uses buckwheat in treatments, a reference to the hotel's origins as a flour mill.

The Skyline Bar has become the place to down sunset cocktails, with its panoramic rooftop pool with views over the island and across to Venice and St Mark's.

The hotel is enormous, with 379 rooms and suites — it is actually a series of buildings linked by courtyards — yet manages to avoid being totally corporate.

It works with the local community — a women's prison nearby takes in all the laundry while inmates also sell vegetables grown at the prison. Director of operations is Stefano Squecco, formerly at the Cipriani, coincidentally the only other hotel in Venice with a pool.

Next to the hotel — on another island, over a small bridge — is the Fortuny factory. You can visit the showroom and see the bolts of rich fabric (80 per cent of it handmade) and buy lavishly covered notebooks and lampshades, but the factory itself remains secret.

In the streets behind the waterfront, we discovered small squares with crumbling Victorian villas, washing strung from the windows like bunting, restored 1920s factories-turned-apartment blocks and modern flats — all surrounding a children's playground.

We sat in the sun while our five-year old, Maya, let off steam. A local girl grabbed her hand firmly, shouting "Mama, attencione", clearly pleased with her find. Maya looked bemused. Eventually we had to go one way and the girl another.

We turned back onto the main fondamento, passing the white front of the Church of Redentore, built to give thanks for the end of the plague of 1576. In celebration, La Festa del Redentore is held here on the third Sunday of July.

There for a week, we ate regularly at at Cacciatori, a friendly family-run trattoria near the hotel. Here we had food that reached the heights of the Istrian cuisine we'd so loved, creamy ribbons of pasta with truffle shavings, seafood (lasagne), whole fresh fish and crispy chicken and pasta from the children's menu — we all wanted this.

There's even an outpost of Harry's Bar near the hotel, the slightly less extortionate Harry's Dolci, while the exclusive Cipriani sits in its walled gardens at the end of the island.
As you walk along the waterfront here, with its unrivalled views of Venice, it's hard not to stare at the Bulgari campaign featuring a giant Julianne Moore stuck up on the Bridge of Sighs.

But she is on the wrong side, I thought — I'd much rather be stuck on Giudecca.

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