Palazzo Balbi is a palace in Venice, located in the Dorsoduro district and overlooking the Grand Canal in that area known as the vault of the canal, between Ca' Foscari and Palazzo Caotorta Angaran. It is the official seat of the President of the Veneto Region and of the Regional Council.
Palazzo Balbi is a building from the second half of the sixteenth
century, built to a design by Alessandro Vittoria to be the home of the
Balbi family, included in the patriciate. The client was called Nicolò
Balbi. The construction site remained open for only eight years, from
1582 to 1590, perhaps due to the owner's urgency to find a new location.
Numerous were the restorations that have followed over the years,
including that of 1737 commissioned by Lorenzo Balbi and the subsequent
one which saw the addition of works created by Jacopo Guarana. In 1807
Napoleon Bonaparte was hosted there, who was thus able to attend the
regatta organized in his honor. Over the years the building was often
rented out. Already in the founder's will it emerges that one of the
noble floors had been rented together with the relative mezzanine rooms
to Almorò Pisani. Among the other tenants we also mention the Valmaranas
and the Biondis.
In 1887 it passed to Michelangelo Guggenheim,
who chose it as the site of his "industrial arts laboratories",
modernized it and brought there his personal art collection, auctioned
in 1913.
In 1925 it passed to the Adriatic Electricity Company.
This oversaw a restructuring that saw the demolition of one of the two
monumental staircases.
In 1971 the building became the property
of the Veneto Region which made it one of its most prestigious
headquarters, where the president of the region lives. In 1973 it
underwent a new conservative intervention.
On 13 January 2020,
the governor Luca Zaia announced the sale of the regional headquarters,
with a starting price of 26.4 million euros.
The building has three floors, with a mezzanine and mezzanine in the
attic, and has a perfectly symmetrical facade, which shows the first
signs of Baroque architecture while respecting the Renaissance forms. A
significant element of this transition is the accentuation of the
chiaroscuro on the facade.
On the ground floor, the facade has a
large round portal in the center bearing a mask and enriched by a
triangular tympanum, embellished with further decorations in the upper
part. The -interrupted- tympanum motif appears here for the first time
in Venice and will be revived later. On the sides there are two minor
entrances, decorated with mixtilinear tympanums. The two noble floors,
of equal size, are vertically tripartite by means of pilasters and
separated horizontally by a thick string course; centrally they have two
round arched three-light windows superimposed with pairs of Ionic
columns and a balustrade; on the sides a pair of rectangular gabled
single lancet windows. Two coats of arms of the Balbi family are
inserted in bas-relief between the single lancet windows on the first
noble floor.
Under the notched cornice there are six small oval
single-lancet windows, inserted in a worked stone frame. This motif is
inspired by the work of Jacopo Sansovino and will also be taken up by
Baldassarre Longhena. On the roof, to dominate the facade, two pinnacles
in the shape of an obelisk, recalling those of Palazzo Belloni Battagia.
Inside there are eighteenth-century frescoes by Jacopo Guarana.
The writer of Venetian curiosities Giuseppe Tassini reports a suggestive anecdote related to the construction of this building. The client, Nicolò Balbi, lived at the time in a rented house. One day, having sincerely forgotten to pay the rent, he was confronted by his landlord himself. Heavily offended, he paid the debt but at the same time decided to have his own home built. He then moved with the whole family on a houseboat, anchored right in front of the former owner's house, to ensure that the latter's residence was obscured.