It is an enormous pile of building, the vast
garden-frontage of which makes considerable claims to architectural
magnificence. There are, especially in Switzerland, very magnificent
and palace-like hotels which have been built for the purpose they
now serve, but the fact that they were so built has very effectually
prevented even the most splendid among them from rivaling, or indeed
approaching, the grandiose magnificence of this superb hostelrie,
which has chosen its name in no idle spirit of vaunting. For building
is costly, space is precious, and the necessity of finding a due
return for the capital employed is the paramount rule which the
architect has to keep ever in mind. The old Morosini, who raised this
pile with the abundant profits of the trade with the East when Venice
had the monopoly of it, were curbed in their architectural ambition by
no such considerations. The building of this Villa Morosini must
have cost a sum which no possible amount of success in the way of
hotel-keeping could ever be expected to pay a tolerable interest on.
But the sum for which it was purchased by the present proprietors by
no means represents the whole of the capital which has been expended
on it as it now stands.
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