La Serenissima: A Venetian Suite Across Three Centuries
Peter Marino orchestrates a masterful dialogue between Old Venice, the golden years of mid century modernism, and contemporary design within a singular suite. The result is a room that doesn't merely overlook the lagoon; it inhabits the very spirit of Venetian living.
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The designer Peter Marino has long understood that a room speaks through layers. La Serenissima, his latest expression within Belmond Hotel Cipriani, reads like a love letter composed across centuries. It is not a simple gesture towards Venetian heritage, but rather a carefully orchestrated conversation between distinct moments in time, each one holding equal weight, each one essential to the narrative.
Three artistic eras converge within this space. The first whispers of Old Venice moves through the room in gesture and memory, in the weight of history that only this city can carry. Then comes the sumptuous elegance of the late Fifties and Sixties, that particular moment when design became audacious, when midcentury modernism offered a thrilling counterpoint to tradition. Finally, contemporary art and design assert themselves with clarity and intention, ensuring the suite never feels like a museum piece but rather a living, breathing place.
The specificity of Marino’s approach lies in his material vocabulary. Murano chandeliers hang with the kind of luminous grace that only handblown Venetian glass can achieve, their light fragmenting across surfaces with an almost musical quality. The signature terrazzo floors anchor every room underfoot, those flecked, polished expanses that feel simultaneously timeless and decidedly modern. Objets d’art sit where they belong, not arranged for effect but positioned with the kind of precision that suggests they chose this location themselves.
A Dialogue with the Lagoon
What distinguishes La Serenissima is its relationship to the water beyond its windows. The sweeping lagoon views are not mere backdrop; they are collaborators in the design conversation. Light moves across the room throughout the day, transforming the way surfaces speak to one another, the way colours shift and settle. The terrazzo catches this light. The Murano glass fractures it. The contemporary artworks absorb it and reflect it in unexpected ways.
This is the essence of Venetian living that Marino has distilled into a single suite: the understanding that beauty emerges from layering, from allowing different times to coexist without apology, from respecting the city’s infinite history whilst remaining firmly in the present. It is a room for those who understand that the most sophisticated spaces are never about one thing, but about the relationship between many things, held in perfect equilibrium.
Imagery courtesy of Belmond Hotel Cipriani (@belmondhotelcipriani).
