Ca' d'Oro: The Golden Palace of the Grand Canal

Why is it significant?

Step into the quiet courtyard of Ca' d'Oro and walk to the water gate opening directly onto the Grand Canal.

Key Facts

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Step into the quiet courtyard of Ca' d'Oro and walk to the water gate opening directly onto the Grand Canal. Look up at the triple tiers of open Gothic marble loggias with their delicate cloverleaf arches and marble filigree: built between fourteen twenty-eight and fourteen thirty for wealthy patrician Marino Contarini, this is the absolute pinnacle of Venetian Floral Gothic architecture.

The name Ca' d'Oro means House of Gold. When first completed, Contarini hired master painters to cover the sculpted marble tracery, cornices, and lion figures with dazzling sheets of pure gold leaf, accented with ultramarine lapis lazuli and red cinnabar, making the facade shimmer like an emerald-and-gold jewel box across the water!

In the late nineteenth century, the palace was bought by ballet dancer Marie Taglioni, who vandalized its historic marble staircases. Luckily, in eighteen ninety-four, Baron Giorgio Franchetti purchased the ruined palace, devoted his fortune and life to meticulously restoring every historic stone, and bequeathed it to the city of Venice alongside Andrea Mantegna's masterpiece of Saint Sebastian.

Head through the San Polo district toward the soaring brick tower of the Frari Basilica.