Doge's Palace, Venice

The palace forms three wings that frame a large arcaded courtyard; the fourth side of that courtyard is formed by the lateral body of St Mark’s Basilica, the ducal chapel. The ensemble sits on a deep engineered foundation: a wooden raft of larch trunks laid on a continuous plinth of Istrian stone supports the masonry above. Paving at the exterior links visually and materially with the adjoining Piazza San Marco, using trachyte and marble set into the same urban surface.

The principal façades face the Piazzetta and the basin of St Mark. The water side measures about seventy-one and a half metres and displays seventeen arcades, while the façade toward the Piazzetta is roughly seventy-five metres long and therefore one arcade longer. Both faces present two storeys of open colonnaded loggias, above which the upper wall is richly veneered with marble inlays and pierced by large ogival (pointed-arch) windows. A central balcony projects on the main front and is set within a sculptural programme of saints and virtues.

The courtyard is surrounded on three sides by covered arcades and contains two large sculpted well-heads, identified as the wells of Alberghetti and of Niccolò de’ Conti. From the courtyard the monumental Giants’ Staircase, built in the late fifteenth century, rises to the first-floor loggia; since 1567 the stair’s upper landing has been flanked by two colossal marble figures representing Mars and Neptune by a leading Renaissance sculptor. Also opening from the courtyard is the Golden Staircase, finished in the mid-sixteenth century and richly ornamented in white stucco and gold leaf to mark the separation between the private apartments of the doge and the rooms of state justice.

The ceremonial Porta della Carta, completed in the fifteenth century to link the palace and basilica, is framed by Gothic pinnacles, statues of the cardinal virtues and crowned by a bust of St Mark with a figure of Justice above. Along the façades and within the loggias the arcade capitals are carved with a wide range of motifs from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; forty-two fragile capitals were removed for preservation in the late nineteenth century and placed in the Museo dell’Opera, where they have been displayed in dedicated rooms and some originals later returned to the palace.

The Great Council Chamber measures 53.50 metres long by 25 metres wide by 15.40 metres high and stands as a vast column-free hall, its ceiling supported by beams and large roof trusses. The room was rebuilt and redecorated after the fire of 1577 and contains a large scheme of panel-format ceiling paintings together with many monumental canvases set around the walls, including a long depiction of Paradise by Tintoretto. Nearby, the Scrutinio Room served for the counting of votes and other civic deliberations, while a series of institutional chambers for the Senate, the Collegio and the Council of Ten occupy the principal floors and the secondary storeys.

Beneath the palace are the ground-floor “Pozzi,” a system of dark, damp cells that functioned as prison spaces, while above the roofs a series of cells known as the Piombi (cells beneath the lead) were subdivided into rooms under the lead roofing and separated by timber partitions. In the early seventeenth century a covered Bridge of Sighs provided a direct, enclosed passage from the palace to the New Prisons across the canal. The New Prisons, completed around 1602, are a multi-level annex accessed by gallery corridors and containing internal chapels and courtyard arrangements that reorganised detention facilities away from the main palazzo fabric.

Sculpture and painting remain integral to the fabric. Reliefs include scenes such as the Archangel Raphael with Tobias, the Drunkenness of Noah and Adam and Eve, and the central balcony carries an array of statues once carved by leading workshop hands. Many original stone fragments and façade sculptures removed during later restorations are held in the Museo dell’Opera on the ground floor. The palace’s fabric shows the results of repeated fires in 1483, 1574 and 1577, episodes that destroyed roofs and artworks and prompted rebuilding campaigns; further losses and replacements occurred during the French occupation in 1797 and in nineteenth-century restorations, including a nineteenth-century substitution for a kneeling figure of a Foscari doge. Several elements have been conserved and restored, and major original stonework and decorative panels survive in situ or under museum care.