Opposite the land entrance is the Porter's Lodge, where one or more porters are always to be found at the disposition of travelers. On the left hand is a Post Office with, for the greater security of all correspondence, a Government letter-box; and close by, the Bureau of the Hotel, with offices for the cashier, for money changing, and for Bank business.
Opposite the grand stairs is a luxurious Smoking Room, its walls hung with rich material, and furnished in Oriental comfort and style, with an American Bar leading out of it. Next it, are two spacious Reading and Writing Rooms, containing the principal newspapers and illustrated publications of the world.
On the right hand of the main door is a large Public Drawing Room, style of 1700, with handsome stucco-work, and gilt furniture covered with rich stuffs, with the hangings and wall-coverings all en suite. This room alone would repay a visit to the hotel. Some idea can be formed of it from the following engravings, though, of course, the full effect of its richness and color is lost. In the two palaces there are a number of other such drawing-rooms, besides a concert hall, ballroom, music room and billiard room, &c. There are also bath rooms and douche baths on every floor. On the ground floor are the kitchens, the wine cellars, the ice cellars, the apparatus for heating the whole buildings by steam, thus spreading a uniform temperature throughout the two Palaces. Here is also the machinery for the lifts, the centre for the distribution of the electric light and the boilers and syphons for giving hot water direct into all the apartments. All this deserves being examined from the novelty of the systems employed and from the exquisite order and tidiness which everywhere reigns.
We will not describe the bedrooms and sitting rooms, except to say that they have all been recently done up and richly furnished with the utmost artistic taste and are all lit with electricity. Many of the apartments have been preserved in the original style, especially the Saloon of the Doges, No. 9, which with the adjoining rooms, Nos. 10, 11 and 12, all of which overlook the Riva degli Schiavoni and the magnificent panorama already described.
The wines and the table are a great speciality of the Hotel Royal Danieli, all being of the very highest order, and its dining rooms and restaurant arranged with small and separate tables, have an unusual character all their own.
The dining rooms are decorated in an entirely novel style and one that is truly poetic. The great windows of ground glass are transformed into eight lovely winter gardens of rare plants, which are reproduced in the big mirrors which line the walls, and the electric light, which hangs in delicate Venetian glass lily pendants round the ceiling, produces a most charming and unusual effect.
The two great restaurant halls are furnished in pure style of the Empire, for all the stuffs and decorations are copied from the best works that treat of that period, and are among the richest and choicest of that famous epoch.
Thus, by a series of ingenious combinations these two palaces, so different from each other in many ways, blend themselves in one harmonious and artistic whole, and in them are united the greatest luxury with the utmost comfort.
