Ca' Rezzonico: Museum of 18th-Century Venice
Why is it significant?
Behind the gate on the Fondamenta Rezzonico rises a white stone giant of a palace, its columns and heavy cornices running straight down into the Grand Canal on the far side.
Key Facts
| Place | Ca' Rezzonico: Museum of 18th-Century Venice |
|---|---|
| Address | Fondamenta Rezzonico, Dorsoduro 3136, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.43350, 12.32680 |
| Part of Walk | Art on the Water: Dorsoduro, the Accademia and the Zattere in Venice |
| Generated | Generated |
Behind the gate on the Fondamenta Rezzonico rises a white stone giant of a palace, its columns and heavy cornices running straight down into the Grand Canal on the far side. Inside, it holds a whole lost century: the museum of eighteenth-century Venice, the last golden age of the Republic before its fall.
The palace was designed by Baldassare Longhena, the architect of the Salute, for the Bon family in the middle of the seventeenth century. But Longhena died in 1682 and the Bon ran out of money, so for decades the building stood unfinished. In 1751 the Rezzonico, a family of merchants who had bought their way into the Venetian nobility, acquired it and had Giorgio Massari complete it. In 1758 the family celebrated its greatest triumph: Carlo Rezzonico was elected pope, as Clement XIII.
That same year Giambattista Tiepolo painted ceilings here for the wedding of a Rezzonico son, and the great ballroom still dazzles with painted architecture and chandeliers. Upstairs are rooms full of Venetian life from that century: Pietro Longhi's little scenes of ladies, fortune tellers and a rhinoceros on show, and the strange, haunting frescoes of Giandomenico Tiepolo, brought here from his family's villa, full of clowns, the Pulcinellas.
In 1888 the palace was bought by Pen Browning, son of the English poet Robert Browning, and his wealthy American wife. The poet came to stay, and here, in December 1889, he died. A plaque on the side of the palace quotes his own lines about the word Italy engraved inside his heart. Decades later, in the 1920s, the songwriter Cole Porter rented the palace for a time and filled it with legendary parties.
And here the walk ends, in front of a palace that still holds the last party of the Venetian Republic. You began in Peggy Guggenheim's twentieth century and walked backwards through Tiepolo, Veronese and Titian, past the gondola builders and the bridge fighters. Take the vaporetto from the Ca' Rezzonico stop, and let the Grand Canal carry you home.