Here he lived happily with his young wife and toiled at the minutiae of his great book; here too he entertained David Roberts and other artists with his father's excellent sherry, which they described as "like the best painting, at once tender and expressive".
And now the hotels begin, almost all of them in houses built centuries ago for noble families.

Thus the first Grand Hotel block is fourteenth century--the Palazzo Gritti.

The next Grand Hotel block is the Palazzo Fini and is seventeenth century, and the third is the Manolesso-Ferro, built in the fourteenth century and restored in the nineteenth.

Then comes the charming fourteenth-century Contarini-Fasan Palace, known as the house of Desdemona, which requires more attention.

The upper part seems to be as it was: the water floor, or sea storey, has evidently been badly botched.