Doge’s Palace
The government palace of the Republic of Venice seems to stand on its head: the heavy upper storeys rest on two airy arcades. The pink and white stone in a diaper pattern makes the façade light. The palace is Venetian Gothic in its most famous form.
There was a palace for the doge, Venice’s elected head of state, on the site as early as the 9th century. The present building began to take shape in 1340, when the republic’s Great Council needed a larger hall. The south front facing the lagoon was built first, followed by the wing facing the Piazzetta, which continued in the same style in the 1420s. The Porta della Carta, the richly carved gateway towards San Marco, was made by Giovanni and Bartolomeo Bon and was completed in 1442. After a fire in 1483 the east wing was rebuilt in Renaissance style.
The façades reverse the usual relationship between heavy and light. At the bottom stands an arcade of short columns. Above runs a loggia with twice as many pointed arches, crowned by quatrefoil openings. On top of these open storeys rests a tall, almost solid wall clad in pink and white stone in a diaper pattern, with only a few large windows. The whole façade is finished by a cresting of pointed ornaments. Inside are the great halls, among them the Hall of the Great Council, one of the largest halls in Europe, with Tintoretto’s huge painting of Paradise.
After fires in 1574 and 1577 there was discussion about replacing the palace with a new building, but it was repaired in its Gothic form instead. When the republic fell in 1797 the building lost its function, and since 1923 it has been a museum. In the 1850s the English art critic John Ruskin described the Doge’s Palace as the central building of the world, and his praise helped make Venetian Gothic a model for 19th-century architecture in Britain and elsewhere. The palace shows how the Gothic was adapted to a city of trade, water and light.