It looks like a 15th-century Gothic palace overlooking the Grand Canal, and yet it is one of Venice’s most successful disguises: this legendary hotel, opened in 1880 as the Grand Hotel Bauer-Grünwald, was rebuilt between 1900 and 1902 by the architect Giovanni Sardi in a neo-Gothic style so convincing that it blends in with the ancient palaces beside it. Even fragments of the 15th-century Arab-Byzantine palace that stood here, demolished in the mid-19th century, ended up in its masonry.