Palazzo Pisani Moretta

The palace faces the Grand Canal in the San Polo district, sitting between Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza and Palazzo Tiepolo at the meeting point of the Rio San Polo with the main canal. The principal façade is executed in the richly ornamented Venetian Gothic mode, arranged in three horizontal zones divided by projecting cornices. The front presents two vertical orders of hexaforas, hexaforas being six‑light window groups, each set beneath pointed lancet arches and dressed with four‑lobed, or quatrefoil, tracery. Balconies serve the second and third main floors, and the mezzanine level above the ground storey carries a continuous openwork balcony that runs across the width of the façade.

At water level, two pointed‑arch portals open from the canal and rise to the mezzanine above. Historically there were also two side doors at the far ends of the façade. The topmost level was altered in the nineteenth century when the roof was turned into a terrace and an extra attic storey was added, enlarging the building’s upper mass.

Inside, the principal floor is laid out around a long portego, a portego being an entrance corridor, which measures about twenty‑four metres in length and organizes the major reception rooms. An original Gothic external stair in the rear courtyard once climbed by two intermediate landings to the upper public floor; that external stair was removed during later eighteenth‑century reconstructions. The second main floor, the piano nobile meaning the main floor for reception, contains the ballroom and in one account a small chapel that opens onto the rear garden. That same floor originally housed paintings by several eighteenth‑century Venetian artists.

The interiors are largely decorated in Baroque and Neoclassical styles from the eighteenth century. The first main floor displays fresco cycles by Jacopo Guarana, including works titled Light that defeats darkness and Apollo with the hours of morning, and adjoining rooms contain paintings by Giambattista Tiepolo (notably Meeting of Venus and Mars, dated 1743) and works by Pietro Longhi. Other important canvases once in the palace included Paolo Veronese’s The Family of Darius at the Feet of Alexander and Giambattista Piazzetta’s The Death of Darius; those two paintings are now located in the National Gallery in London and the Museo Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice respectively. Additional eighteenth‑century artists associated with the house include Giuseppe Angeli, Gaspare Diziani, Giambattista Piazzetta and Costantino Cedini.

Access from land is provided by the narrow calle known as the Ramo Pisani e Barbarigo, a covered lane with passetti, or small covered walkways, that linked Pisani and Barbarigo properties. On the upper levels a wing was physically connected to the neighbouring Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza by a passage across the Calle Corner, so that the two palaces functioned in close contact. The fabric of the building has been the subject of recent restoration work and today the palace stands as a privately owned, restored historic residence used for formal balls and rented events.