History of the Doge's Palace in Venice

[4] The transfer of the doge's seat to Metamaucum, a fortified city with a flourishing economy due to cultivation corresponding to modern Malamocco, took place under the rule of Teodato Ipato, son of Orso:[3] this choice is said to have been made because he accused the inhabitants of Eraclea of having killed his father.

[17] This second theory is supported by several elements: first, the dogate of Vitale II Michiel was characterized by the outbreak of strong contrasts between Venetians and Byzantines, and the latter would never have allowed the removal of the columns;[18] secondly, Francesco Foscari, in stating that "those columns stood for many years on the ground, no person being found whose disposition was sufficient to raise them up", suggests that a fair amount of time must have passed between their arrival and their erection, which would be unlikely if their arrival dated to the end of Vitale II Michiel's dogate or the beginning of Sebastiano Ziani's.

[1] The expansion of space was related to the need to provide a home for the many organs and offices that were springing up at the time,[6] while the shift from a fortified structure to a civilian, open architecture testifies to how the defensive necessity was no longer so keenly felt, since, as the domains of the lagoon city expanded, the boundaries of its possessions were increasingly distant from the centers of power.

[26] Ziani's political heir was Jacopo Tiepolo, who, according to the sixteenth-century religious scholar Gerolamo de Bardi, commissioned a decoration of the Hall of the Great Council that included a depiction of the life of Pope Alexander III.

[27] The existence of this decoration was in the past cast into doubt because of the lack of knowledge of the place where this organ gathered from the time of Ziani until 1423, when it was supposedly transferred: today it is possible to state that, in accordance with the assumptions of nineteenth-century sources,[27] the primitive hall of the Great Council was located in the southern wing, on the first floor.

[33] The fact that this loggia was probably in line with the main door of the palace and with the staircase mentioned earlier suggests that the ancient entrance was located where the Porta della Carta was later erected.

From the simple renovation of one room, it became a more complex building site, which was to include the reconstruction of the entire southern wing: this was due not only to the new practical needs, but also because the Great Council was becoming increasingly important, to the detriment of the figure of the doge, and therefore its hall was to demonstrate the influence and wealth of the members of that body.

Work then began in 1309, consisting of the demolition and reconstruction from the foundations of the southern side facing the sea, a wing where the Great Council had already previously met, later temporarily relocated to the Hall of the Senate or Pregadi.

[51] However, this reconstruction must be compared with a document dated September 23, 1361, reported verbatim in Cadorin's chronicles and constituting one of the main biographical sources regarding Pietro Basejo, identified therein as the first architect at a time before Calendario's activity.

[53] At the same time as these works, in 1322 the church of San Nicolò, located in the wing facing the canal, was enlarged to the detriment of the adjacent rooms, enriched with marble columns of oriental workmanship, and decorated with the stories of Alexander III, which was finally provided with an apse and windows in the Gothic style typical of the period.

At the same time, a cage was also made under the portico of the Doge's Palace, suitable for housing a pair of lions, which gave as offspring three cubs, one male and two females, one of which was sent to Verona as a gift to Cangrande della Scala.

[61] The former's activity is suggested by the fact that around 1350 Calendario was commissioned to make a series of trips on behalf of the Serenissima, and also during that period he engaged in a number of military campaigns: this testifies that he did not have a fixed commitment to the construction site.

[67][72] This error was due to a misinterpretation of what was written in the Cronaca Zancarola, and was pointed out by Dall'Acqua, who understood its causes and justified it by saying that the chronicler in writing what he had reported spoke in the plural of facades of the western side referring to the outer and the inner one.

The gate, which changed its name several times over the ages, was known as the Porta della Carta: the origin of this may be due to several legends: the first states that there were large stores of paper near it for the neighboring offices, the second that many documents passed through it,[90] the third that public scribes crowded around it.

[125] After Antonio Grimani's brief dogate, work continued on the building, but at a slower pace since other important construction sites were also open (Rialto Bridge, Venetian Arsenal, Zecca of Venice, Marciana Library).

[157] In view of the fact that operating off-site caused various inconveniences to the various offices,[158][159][160] on March 27, 1533 discussion resumed in the Senate concerning the previous proposal of the Council of Ten to complete the work of rebuilding,[161] which in 1538, however, had not seen progress.

[165] Later, up to 1574, various works of mere decoration were carried out in the palace by Il Pordenone, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Alessandro Vittoria, Jacopo Sansovino and Battista Franco in the new wing, the Golden Staircase, the Scrutiny Room, and the Great Council Chamber,[165] but many of these would be destroyed in the two subsequent fires.

[171] Once the flames were extinguished, the senators elected three men to take care of the reconstruction of the damaged rooms: Andrea Badoer,[citation needed] Vincenzo Morosini and Pietro Foscari, who appointed Antonio da Ponte as director of works.

[178] Despite the rush of workers to contain the fire, the ceilings of the halls of the Scrutiny and the Great Council collapsed, destroying valuable works of art by Carpaccio, Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, and others.

[181][182] However, due to the impediments constituted by the celebrations for Lent, the Council moved to the two halls of the Remi, in the Arsenal;[181] new entrances were built that would allow the nobles to access them without passing through the building site.

[185] The architects' answers to these questions were mixed; for a long time it was mistakenly believed that Palladio wanted to raze the entire palace to the ground and rebuild it according to his own design.

[186] Sorte was also skeptical of the corner toward the Ponte della Paglia bridge, which he considered unsafe;[187] de Grandi envisioned a facade adorned with several orders of columns of different styles.

A fundamental work for the understanding of this project is the Dichiaratione di tutte le istorie che si contengono nei quadri posti novamente nelle sale dello Scrutinio et del gran Consiglio del Palagio Ducale della Serenissima Republica di Vinegia, nella quale si ha piena intelligenza delle più segnalate vittorie, conseguite di varie nationi del mondo dai Vinitiani (Declaration of all the histories which are contained in the pictures placed again in the halls of the Scrutiny and the Great Council of the Ducal Palace of the Most Serene Republic of Venice, in which there is full insight into the most distinguished victories, achieved from various nations of the world by the Venetians) by Bardi himself.

[197] The work of modernizing the facades was completed between 1571 and 1579 when, to celebrate a grand Venetian victory over the Ottomans, the balconies facing the square and the pier were respectively decorated at their tops with allegorical statues of Venice and Justice.

In fact, he did not demolish the Scala Foscara first, but he had a portico built in place of the load-bearing wall that supported the southern wing of the palace (and thus also the Hall of the Great Council), similar to the one designed by Rizzo; the completion of these works can be dated to the dogate of Leonardo Donà and more precisely to 1607 because of the presence of coats of arms and because of what the chronicles mention.

[208] Under Giovanni Bembo the worksite related to the decoration of that front was completed with the realization of the famous clock: this work, at first traced by Bettio and Cicognara to the dogates of Memmo or that of Nicolò Donà, is nevertheless to be attributed to the latter period because of the presence of a coat of arms of the aforementioned doge.

[215] After the fall of the Venetian Republic, the end of which was decreed at the session of the Great Council on May 12, 1797, the palace was no longer used as the seat of the prince and the magistracies, instead serving as the administrative offices of the Napoleonic and Habsburg empires.

[204] Even the fire department found a home in the building, being placed in the atrium of the Porta del Frumento, from which all the works of art were removed (among them Jupiter striking vices in the Hall of the Council of Ten and the oval in the center of the ceiling of the Compass Room, never returned and now moved to the Louvre Museum; Juno offering the ducal horn, gems, and gold to Venice, also in the Hall of the Council of Ten, was instead later returned);[218] in 1841 the large clock located in the courtyard was renovated;[218] in 1844, as the Venetian Institute of Science, Letters, and Arts had found a home in the building, the roofs of the entire complex were renovated;[218] Antonio Zambler meanwhile restored the paintings in the Hall of the Great Council;[219] between 1847 and 1849 the loggias on the second floor were restored to place busts of distinguished Venetian citizens;[219] between 1852 and 1854 all the large balconies of the Great Council and Scrutiny halls and the Porta della Carta were profoundly renovated under the supervision of Gaspare Biondetti and Vincenzo Fadiga;[219] some rooms attached to the newly built Doge's Apartment were demolished in order to make the height of all the facades facing the central courtyard equal: Silvio Pellico had been imprisoned in them, but he confused them with the Piombi, which had already been destroyed in 1797.

[221] In December 1923, the Italian state, owner of the complex, entrusted its management to the City of Venice, which transformed it into the museum that is still active today and part of the Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia since 1996.

1361 die XXIII mense sept.Cum lutia, Zaninus, et catarutia filii q. et heredes Petri Baseio olim magistri prothi palatii nostri novi, exponant quod Philippus Calendarius fuit comisarius patris eorum, et intromisit dictam comisariam in tantum quod de bonis spectantibus dicte comisarie exegit, de quadam navi, ubi dictus pater eorum partem habebat libras quatuor, solidos tres et denarios sex grossorum sicut apparet per scriptum manu dicti Philippi, et per quaternos suos existentes penes officium racionum qui se concordant cum dicta scripta manu ipsius Philippi, et propterea petant ipsam quantitatem pecunie eis dare, vadit pars, habita responsione officialium racionum et advocatorum communis dicentium, quod examinato factio inveniunt verum esse, ut supra continetur.