The Ducal Palace in Venice: the wonders of power

Why you should visit the Doge's Palace with a guide!

It is really difficult to explain in a few lines what the Doge's Palace was.
Any description, however accurate, will never be enough to describe the centuries-old feverish work of the Venetian noblemen devoted to their homeland, the sound of the footsteps of the ambassadors who trampled the Venetian terraces, the millions of documents that were signed by the chancellors, the amount of speeches given, the money issued to keep the city always splendid. It will never be possible to evoke in a few sentences the emotions generated by a decree that promises Mary the construction of a church in exchange for her help for the liberation from the plague, or the anxious waiting for a dispatch from the Bailo of Constantinople, or tears generated by the news that the Venetian fleet had defeated the Turks.
What description could ever pay enough honor to a thousand years of history?


Inevitable: it is necessary to simplify and select, select and simplify, without however diminishing the complexity of this building which was the political and administrative heart of the Venetian State for centuries.

As soon as the visitor enters the palace, one is struck by the spacious courtyard that unexpectedly opens up before his/her eyes. In the summer, the Istrian stone is charged with dazzling light and enhanced by the reddish color of the bricks. The unitary aspect of the courtyard is actually a deception: it was recreated during the 17th century to harmonize the three wings of the complex which, the first two in Gothic style, the last in Renaissance style, appeared very different.
In the courtyard you can find the famous Scala dei Giganti, on which the colossal statues of Mars and Neptune stand impassively and regardless of time, reminiscent of the Stato da Terra and the Stato da Mar, the double power of Venice on Land and Sea. They are the work of the celebrated architect Jacopo Sansovino.

Going up the Scala d’oro, a monumental staircase of honor designed in the 1550s again by Sansovino, covered in real gold, you reach the first institutional halls, which are the rooms where some of the councils of the State met.

In the Hall of the Four Doors, whose ceiling was painted by Tintoretto and retouched by Bambini and Guarana in the 18th century, one usually stops to admire the only painting by Titian visible in the path: Doge Grimani kneeling in front of Faith. It is a somewhat mysterious canvas, commissioned to commemorate Doge Antonio Grimani by his family successors. Accused of having caused the ruin of the Venetian fleet in the battle of Zonchio against the Turks in 1499, condemned to exile in Cres from which he escaped, Antonio Grimani took refuge in Rome, where he managed to convince the Pope not to ally against Venice in the League of Cambrai. In this painting, the doge is therefore depicted in front of Faith, to rehabilitate the elderly doge and qualify him as a defender of Christianity.

Everyone is kept amazed in the Sala del Collegio, especially for the wonderful ceiling painted by Paolo Caliari the Veronese. The three main paintings depict Mars and Neptune, Faith and Venice receiving Peace and Justice. They are a perfect lesson in how a good government was supposed to work. My favorite allegory, among those that adorn the ceiling, is Dialectic: a woman who weaves a web with her hands, to remember the difficult and delicate work of those who work with their heads and words.

Then follows the Senate Room, where 120 senators decided about peace and war, trade and navigation, finance and public health and much more. Do not miss to notice the two splendid clocks and the large ceiling painting by Giacomo Robusti known as Tintoretto with The Triumph of Venice in which you can see the personification of the city that dominates land and sea. Venice, in the painting of the 16th century, is depicted as a crowned queen who dresses in gold and wears the mantle of ermine: to create this image, painters blended the iconographies of Venus, Virgin Mary and Justice, dressing her in doges' clothes.

When you cross the threshold of the Council of Ten Room you enter a world of justice and repression, which no modern Western mind can truly comprehend. The Ten were very powerful judges, who investigated upon the highest crimes, those that could endanger the very life of the State. Some of the riskiest moments in the history of the Republic, from the conspiracy of Doge Marin Faliero (1355, you will see his portrait obscured in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio) to that of Bedmar (1612), have passed through this group of judges. On the ceiling of the room, it is customary to indicate the central canvas, a 19th-century copy of the original by Veronese that Napoleon took for the Louvre: it depicts Jupiter chasing the Vices. The original is this: https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010064379 .

Do not miss a visit to the Armory, where foreign dignitaries were invited to scrutinize the means by which the Venetian war feats were achieved. The crossbows, halberds, mixed weapons, ship artillery, the shiplights of Turkish ships, perhaps those of Lepanto, are impressive.

Then we arrive at the heart of the visit, the immense and overwhelming Sala del Maggior Consiglio, in which all the nobles with the right to vote met with the main function of electing all the political offices of the central and peripheric State. If a new Councilor was needed, an Avogadore de Comun, a Podestà of Padua, a Camerlengo, a Savio di Terraferma, or a new Doge, it was the Maggior Consiglio to elect them, clearly within the nobility. The room was entirely renovated after the disastrous 1577 fire, and embellished with canvases by Tintoretto, Veronese, Palma il Giovane, Bassano and their followers.
If you want to read something more about the huge canvas that represents the Paradise painted by Giacomo and (above all) by his son Domenico Tintoretto, within 1592, you can find some more information at this link: https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010064379 2018/09/14 / paradise-by-tintoretto-a-must-see-in-the-doges-palace .

You will then pass to the Sala dello Scrutinio, where you should take a look at least at the Battle of Lepanto by Andrea Michieli the Vicentino, probably painted around 1595. It depicts one of the most famous battles fought on the Mediterranean Sea, on 7 October 1571. Christians, represented by Venice, Spain and the Papacy, faced the Turkish fleet at the Gulf of Patras, achieving a landslide victory. Try to find the portrait of Sebastiano Venier, the Venetian captain, who heroically fights without a helmet on the deck of his galley: on his return, he will be elected 87th Doge of Venice in 1577.

Finally, the route will take you to the New Prison House across the famous Bridge of Sighs. It is not true that it was Lord Byron, the English poet, who gave the name to the bridge, which was so called at least a century earlier. What is certain is that everybody can easily imagine the sighs of the prisoners who left their freedom to enter the prison and could cast a last look at freedom out of the bridge windows...
The New Prison was built because the Pozzi and the Piombi, located in the Doge's Palace itself, were not sufficient in number and space. In 1580 the construction of the prisons over the river began, a colossal construction that will remain in use until the 1920s. You will notice the graffiti on the cell walls, which today are empty. You will find reconstructed cells, all lined with wood, with beds and shelves on the walls.
You will be relieved when you find the exit!

I hope these few notes can be of some help. If you wish to be accompanied by myself to the Doge's Palace please contact me: there are endless stories waiting to be told!  

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