Palazzo Foresti Papadopoli (or Palazzo Poerio Papadopoli) is a palace in Venice, located in the Santa Croce district and overlooking the Tolentini canal between Palazzo Condulmer and the Papadopoli Hotel, opposite the Church of San Nicola da Tolentino. Palazzo Foresti Papadopoli or Poerio, on 11 January 2010, was declared of cultural interest pursuant to art. 12 of Legislative Decree 42/2004.
It was built in the 16th century and substantially remodeled in the
18th century, with further restorations in the 20th century. In the
first decades of the twentieth century the property was sold by Count
Papadopoli to the Municipality of Venice, which opened it to the public.
The grandiose garden was then reduced to half of its extension (what
remains of it forms the gardens of the same name behind the building and
the surviving flowerbeds of Piazzale Roma) in 1933 with the creation of
the Rio Novo and the raising of the Park Hotel on the south side ( then
Sofitel Hotel, now Hotel Papadopoli).
The building was adapted
for school use and on 19 December 1921 the girls' elementary school was
inaugurated here, later named after Alessandro Poerio. It was also
thought of as an open-air school as it was surrounded by an imposing
park of almost 12,000 m², which also hosted pupils from other schools,
according to pre-established times. Due to the decrease in the school
population in Venice, the school was closed and today houses the command
of the traffic police. Recently, the municipality of Venice put the
property up for auction for the sum of 14,000,000 euros.
Clearly classical in taste, the planimetric setting is simple, rectangular in shape and at the same time reveals the classic typology of the living room and portego passanti. The portego on the ground floor is accessed through the central entrances on the façade. The building has two architecturally well-defined elevations: one to the east with a more urban character, which overlooks Rio dei Tolentini and looks at the facade of the church of the same name, and the other to the west overlooking the appurtenant garden. The two facades, while presenting different architectural elements, have in common the search for symmetry that reflects the tripartite system inside, and the setting of the window holes according to the central axis which coincides with both cases on the ground floor with accesses to the building. The north side that overlooks the pedestrian walkway that crosses the Papadopoli Gardens is joined to the nearby hotel by a portico. The building is spread over two floors, plus a mezzanine floor and an attic.