The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

the canal grande
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The Right Bank
steel substructure. At the foot of the bridge, on the far side, is the huge fifteenth-century
Palazzo Franchetti; repaired and enlarged at the end of the
nineteenth century, it’s often cited as one of the city’s most heavy-handed
pieces of restoration work.
On the opposite side of the Rio dell’Orso are the twinned Palazzi Barbaro;
the house on the left is early fifteenth-century, the other late seventeenthcentury.
Henry James, Monet, Whistler, Browning and John Singer Sargent
were among the luminaries who stayed in the older Barbaro house as guests
of the Curtis family in the late nineteenth century. James finished The Aspern
Papers here, and used it as a setting for The Wings of a Dove (as did the makers
of the film of the book); so attached was he to the place that when given the
opportunity of buying a home in Venice at a very reasonable price, he decided
he would rather go on living here as a lodger.
Soon after the short fondamenta comes the tiny Casetta delle Rose, where
Canova once had his studio and D’Annunzio lived during World War I. The
Casetta lies in the shadow of one of the Canal Grande’s most imposing structures
– Sansovino’s Palazzo Corner della Ca’ Grande. The palace that used
to stand here was destroyed when a fire that had been lit to dry out a stock
of sugar in the attic spread though the whole building, an incident that illustrates
the dual commercial-residential function of many palaces in Renaissance
Venice. Sansovino’s replacement, commissioned by the nephews of Caterina
Cornaro, was built from 1545 onwards, and the rustication of its lower storey
– a distinctive aspect of many Roman and Tuscan buildings of the High
Renaissance – makes it a prototype for Longhena’s Ca’ Pésaro and Ca’ Rezzonico.
Though the Corners were among the wealthiest clans in Venice, the
palazzo was partly funded by a large donation from the state coffers. When
Caterina Cornaro had died in 1510, the family had not claimed their share of
her estate, instead allowing the government to use the money to subsidize the
armed forces that were then embroiled in the War of the League of Cambrai.
Now the nephews argued that the state owed them some help in funding the
construction of a house that would, after all, be an adornment to the city
– and the Council of Ten duly authorized the payment of 30,000 ducats.
The heavily restored fifteenth-century Palazzo Pisani, now the Gritti Hotel,
looms over the Santa Maria del Giglio landing stage – John and Effie Ruskin
stayed here in 1851, the year The Stones of Venice began to appear in print.
Squeezed into the line of buildings that follows is the narrow Palazzo Contarini-Fasan,
a mid-fifteenth-century palace with unique wheel tracery on the
balconies. It’s popularly known as “the house of Desdemona”, but although
the model for Shakespeare’s heroine did live in Venice, her association with
this house is purely sentimental. The last major building before the Giardinetti
Reali is the fifteenth-century Palazzo Giustinian; now the HQ of the Biennale
and the tourist board, it was formerly one of the plushest hotels in town,
numbering the likes of Verdi, Ruskin and Proust among its guests.
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The Right Bank
Arriving in Venice by road, you come in on the right bank of the Canal
Grande at Piazzale Roma, opposite the train station. Orientation is initially
difficult, with canals heading off in various directions and no immediate
landmark; it’s not until the vaporetto swings round by the train station that it
becomes obvious that this is the city’s main waterway.