The Comforter Paolo Lorenzoni

s a young man I first travelled to Venice in the company of my boss, the film director Kathryn Bigelow, who was part of the jury at the Biennale, the city’s famous film festival. Though we stayed at the now defunct Grand Hotel des Bains, the, and where Luchino Visconti set his film based on the novella, one evening we ventured to Venice proper and had dinner at the Gritti Palace. I was ignorant of the Gritti’s extraordinary history, as the location where Hemingway wrote and where Somerset Maugham would often be found. But what I knew immediately was that I was in love with the place. At the time, in my early twenties, I promised myself that when I was older I would stay there and become one of its habitués. Years later, I would have the great fortune to make this dream a reality, but my experience of the Gritti — which I consider less a hotel and more an unofficial members’ club — was transformed by the arrival of its General Manager, Paolo Lorenzoni.