Ca' Dario is a palace in Venice, located at number 353 in the Dorsoduro district, which directly overlooks the Grand Canal. The building is famous for the alleged curse that would hang over it: according to legend, in fact, its owners would be destined to go bankrupt or die a violent death.
The building was commissioned to the architect Pietro Lombardo in
1479 by Giovanni Dario as a wedding dowry for his daughter Marietta,
betrothed to Vincenzo Barbaro, a wealthy spice merchant who owned the
homonymous building in Campo San Vio. Giovanni Dario, a bourgeois of
Dalmatian origins, carried out important duties for the Republic of
Venice: he was a merchant, notary of the ducal chancery, ducal secretary
and earned the title of savior of the homeland after, in 1479, he
managed to negotiate an agreement peace with the Turks.
In 1494,
on the death of Giovanni Dario, the palace was inherited by his daughter
Marietta and then passed to Vincenzo Barbaro. The Barbaro family
remained in possession of the palace until the beginning of the 19th
century, when Alessandro Barbaro (1764-1839), member of the last Council
of Ten of the Republic of Venice and aulic councilor of the Supreme
Court of Verona, sold the palace to Arbit Abdoll, an Armenian gemstone
dealer.
Ca' Dario is often described as one of the most
characteristic buildings in Venice, often compared to the Ca' d'Oro. Its
strange beauty struck the interest of John Ruskin, who described its
marble decorations in great detail. The back of the building, painted
red, overlooks Campiello Barbaro.
In 1908 Claude Monet used Ca'
Dario as the subject for a series of typically impressionist paintings:
all from the same perspective, but with different light conditions. One
of the last restoration, arrangement and interior furnishing
interventions was carried out in 1977 by Giorgio Pes, set decorator for
the film The Leopard.
The slender and asymmetrical facade on the Grand Canal, characterized
by a limited width of about 10 meters, hangs on one side due to a
structural failure and presents elements of clear Renaissance matrix, in
contrast with the other facades which maintain the Gothic style then
still widespread in Venice. It is completely decorated with polychrome
marble and Istrian stone, alternating in eighty circular medallions. The
ground floor has two single-lancet windows and a water portal, while
each of the upper floors is illuminated by a four-lancet window and a
single-lancet window.
The fireplaces, in typical Venetian style,
are among the few original examples of the period that have survived to
this day. The neo-Gothic balcony was added in the 19th century. At the
base of the building there is the inscription VRBIS GENIO IOANNES DARIVS
(in Latin, "John Darius, in honor of the genius of the city").
Internally, the building is characterized by a large atrium with a
marble well curb, a finely decorated marble staircase that leads to the
noble floors and an oriental-inspired internal fountain, located in a
room that follows the Moorish style in the decoration and shape of the
windows. The rear facade, with a clearly restored Gothic appearance,
appears uneven: the characteristic red color acts as a glue for a set of
fireplaces, roof terraces, Gothic windows and loggias.
The architectural beauty of Ca' Dario contrasts with its reputation
as a cursed building, a reputation conferred on it by the tragic fate
that has united many of its owners. According to an alleged curse that
would weigh on the house, in fact, the owners of Ca' Dario would be
destined to end up broke or to die a violent death.
Marietta, the
daughter of Giovanni Dario, committed suicide following the financial
collapse of her husband Vincenzo Barbaro, who was stabbed to death.
Tragic end also for their son Giacomo, who died in an ambush in Candia,
on the island of Crete. These three deaths caused a sensation among the
Venetians, who anagrammed the inscription on the façade, transforming it
from VRBIS GENIO IOANNES DARIVS to SVB RVINA INSIDIOSA GENERO (in Latin,
"I generate under an insidious ruin").
The descendants of the
Barbaro family inherited the palace until the early 19th century, when
Alessandro Barbaro sold it to Arbit Abdoll, an Armenian gemstone
merchant, who went bankrupt shortly after taking possession of the
mansion. Abdoll, in 1838, was forced to sell Ca' Dario for 480 pounds to
the Englishman Rawdon Brown, who, in turn, resold it four years later
due to lack of money to renovate it. The building was then bought by a
Hungarian count and then resold to a rich Irishman, Mr. Marshall, to be
bought in 1896 by the Countess Isabelle Gontran de la Baume-Pluvinel,
who had it restored, and by her friend Augustine Bulteau.
It
hosted the French poet Henri de Régnier, invited by the Countess de la
Baume-Pluvinel, until a serious illness interrupted his stays in Venice.
After the war Ca 'Dario was bought by Charles Briggs, an American
billionaire, who was however forced to flee Venice due to the constant
rumors about his homosexuality, taking refuge in Mexico, where his lover
committed suicide.
Having remained without an owner for a long
time, in 1964 the purchase was proposed to the tenor Mario Del Monaco,
who however did not take it into consideration precisely because of the
rumors about the previous owners.
A few years later Ca' Dario was
bought by the Turin count Filippo Giordano delle Lanze, who was killed
inside the palace in 1970 by a Croatian sailor named Raoul Blasich, with
whom he had a relationship. Blasich, convicted of the murder at first
instance, fled to London, where he disappeared and according to one
version was himself assassinated.
The building was then bought by
Christopher "Kit" Lambert, manager of the rock group The Who, who fell
in love with its romantic and melancholy appearance. In this environment
his addiction to drugs worsened to the point of undermining, in 1974,
his relations with the band, causing his arrest for possession of drugs
and favoring his financial collapse. While claiming that he did not
believe in the curse, Lambert had confided in some friends that he slept
in the gondoliers' kiosk of the nearby Hotel Gritti to "escape the
ghosts that haunted him in the Palazzo".
In 1978, three years
before his death, Kit Lambert sold Ca' Dario to a Venetian businessman,
Fabrizio Ferrari, who moved there with his sister Nicoletta, who died in
a freak car accident without witnesses. Fabrizio Ferrari, after a short
time, was involved in a financial crash and was also arrested on charges
of beating up a model. At the end of the eighties the building was
bought by the financier Raul Gardini, who intended to give it to his
daughter. Gardini, after a series of economic setbacks and involvement
in the Tangentopoli scandal, committed suicide in 1993 in circumstances
that have never been fully clarified.
After Gardini's death no
one wanted to buy Ca' Dario anymore, to the point that the first
brokerage firm that had received the mandate for the sale gave up and
put the job back on. At the end of the nineties the director and actor
Woody Allen seemed intent on buying the building, but he gave up. In
2002, a week after renting Ca' Dario for a holiday in Venice, bassist
John Entwistle died of a heart attack. In 2006 the property passed to an
American company representing an unknown buyer and is currently
undergoing restoration.