Doge's Palace

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Doge's Palace with Bridge of Sighs to the right

Carved marble façade inside courtyard

The Doge's Palace is a gothic palace in Venice. In Italian it is called the Palazzo Ducale di Venezia. The palace was the residence of the Doge of Venice.

Its two most visible facades look towards the Venetian Lagoon and St Mark's Square, or rather the Piazzetta. The use of arcading in the lower stories produces an interesting "gravity-defying" effect. There is also effective use of colour contrasts (unfortunately, the patterns are not well shown in the illustrative photographs accompanying this article...from a distance the colours blur).

The current palace was largely constructed from 1309 to 1424, designed perhaps by Filippo Calendario. It replaced earlier fortified buildings of which relatively little is known. Giovanni and Bartolomeo Bon created the Porta della Carta in 1442, a monumental late-gothic gate on the Piazzetta side of the palace. The palace was badly damaged by fire in 1574, and in the subsequent rebuilding work it was decided to respect the original style despite a neo-classical alternative design submitted by Palladio.

As well as being the ducal residence, it contained the offices of a number of political institutions of the Republic of Venice, arranged around a central courtyard, which is entered from the Porta della Carta. The building contains what is known as the Bussola chamber, where citizens could submit written complaints.

Since the sixteenth century the palace has been linked to the prison by the Bridge of Sighs.

Stairs in Doge's Palace

Ornamental bronze well-head

Doge's Palace

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Doge's Palace

The building is preserved as a museum. Inside the visitor can see works by Tintoretto and Veronese.

There are a number of nineteenth-century imitations of the palace's architecture in the United Kingdom, eg. the Wool Exchange, Bradford, the Wedgwood Institute, Burslem. These revivals of Venetian Gothic were influenced by the theories of John Ruskin, author of The Stones of Venice.
There are imitations of the architecture in Las Vegas, USA.