[2] In 810, Doge Agnello Participazio moved the seat of government from the island of Malamocco to the area of the present-day Rialto, when it was decided a palatium duci (Latin for "ducal palace") should be built.

However, no trace remains of that 9th-century building as the palace was partially destroyed in the 10th century by a fire set by citizens rebelling against Doge Pietro IV Candiano.

Although only few traces remain of that palace, some Byzantine-Venetian architecture characteristics can still be seen at the ground floor, with the wall base in Istrian stone and some herring-bone pattern brick paving.

In the subsequent rebuilding work it was decided to respect the original Gothic style, despite the submission of neo-classical alternative designs by the influential Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio.

As well as being the ducal residence, the palace housed political institutions of the Republic of Venice until the Napoleonic occupation of the city in 1797, when its role inevitably changed.

The oldest part of the palace is the wing overlooking the lagoon, the corners of which are decorated with 14th-century sculptures, thought to be by Filippo Calendario and various Lombard artists such as Matteo Raverti and Antonio Bregno.

Flanked by Gothic pinnacles, with two figures of the Cardinal Virtues per side, the gateway is crowned by a bust of Mark the Evangelist over which rises a statue of Justice with her traditional symbols of sword and scales.

The design envisaged a straight axis with the rounded Foscari Arch, with alternate bands of Istrian stone and red Verona marble, linking the staircase to the Porta della Carta, and thus producing one single monumental approach from the Piazza into the heart of the building.

Due to fires, structural failures, and infiltrations, and new organizational requirements and modifications or complete overhaulings of the ornamental trappings there was hardly a moment in which some kind of works have not been underway at the building.

From the Middle Ages, the activities of maintenance and conservation were in the hands of a "technical office", which was in charge of all such operations and oversaw the workers and their sites: the Opera, or fabbriceria or procuratoria.

The work involved the two facades and the capitals belonging to the ground-floor arcade and the upper loggia: 42 of these, which appeared to be in an especially dilapidated state, were removed and replaced by copies.

After undergoing thorough and careful restoration works, they are now exhibited, on their original columns, in these six rooms of the museum, which are traversed by an ancient wall in great blocks of stone, a remnant of an earlier version of the palace.

The rooms in which the Doge lived were always located in this area of the palace, between the Rio della Canonica – the water entrance to the building – the present-day Golden Staircase and the apse of St. Mark's Basilica.

The famous name of the bridge dates from the Romantic period and was supposed to refer to the sighs of prisoners who, passing from the courtroom to the cell in which they would serve their sentence, took a last look at freedom as they glimpsed the lagoon and San Giorgio through the small windows.

The only art theft from the Doge's Palace was executed on 9 October 1991 by Vincenzo Pipino, who hid in one of the cells in the New Prisons after lagging behind a tour group, then crossed the Bridge of Sighs in the middle of the night to the Sala di Censori.

There are a number of 19th-century imitations of the palace's architecture in the United Kingdom, for example: These revivals of Venetian Gothic were influenced by the theories of John Ruskin, author of the three-volume The Stones of Venice, which appeared in the 1850s.

The elaborate arched facade of the Bush Street Temple in San Francisco, built in 1895, is a copy in painted redwood of the Doge's Palace.