The Casino Venier in Venice is located between the Rialto bridge and Piazza San Marco in the Mercerie.
The origin of the word casino (small house), or reduced (to reduce,
i.e. go to) provides an idea of what these places were: small but
welcoming and intimate places, where you can meet friends after the
theatre. The casinos were numerous in Venice since the sixteenth
century, but it was in the eighteenth century that these meeting
places met with real success: in 1744 there were as many as 118,
almost all in the vicinity of Piazza San Marco. They were meeting
places, for entertainment, sometimes for debauchery, even real
literary salons: people gambled, danced, had amorous encounters, but
they also talked about theater and the new philosophy that came from
France.
From an architectural and decorative point of view, the
Casino Venier is one of the most characteristic. It was a gaming and
conversation hall owned by the attorney Venier but used by his wife,
Elena Priuli, a cultured and refined noblewoman. It is located near
the Ponte dei Bareteri, above the portico of the Acque, on the
mezzanine floor of an inconspicuous building. All its richness is
discovered only inside.
The arrangement of the rooms repeats
the typology of Venetian palaces in a small way, with a central hall
from which the other rooms branch off symmetrically. The second room
on the right overlooks the liagò, a small balcony covered in wrought
iron with the Venier coat of arms, which allows you to see from above,
unnoticed. The internal decoration, from the years 1750-1760, has been
preserved intact to this day, with original floors in connected
marble. The stuccos and frescoes, the mirrors and fireplaces, the
doors in precious rosewood and the handles and locks in bronze are
also original. Hidden in the marble floor of the entrance hall, a
peephole allows you to monitor who is about to enter: an excellent
tool for protecting the privacy of this place. Behind the entrance
staircase is a small room equipped with grates carved in gilded wood:
this is probably the room of the musicians who, hidden, played for the
guests, and whose music spread through the grates. Probably the
grilles were also used to spy unnoticed on what was happening in the
hall.
The interior of the Casino Venier required many
consolidation and cleaning works, which were possible thanks to the
intervention of the Comité français pour la sauvegarde de Venise
which, in the eighties, financed the restoration works, and to that of
UNESCO , whose contribution allowed the frescoes to be brought to
light in 1992.
Casino Venier has been the headquarters of the
Italian-French cultural association Alliance Française since 1987.