Palazzo Cavalli or Palazzo Corner Martinengo is a building in Venice, located in the San Marco district and overlooking the Grand Canal.
Built in the 16th century and remodeled in the following centuries,
Palazzo Cavalli is known for having hosted the writer James Fenimore
Cooper in the 19th century.
It was owned by the Rava' family of
Venice from the early 1900s until 1957, when it was acquired and
completely restored by Dr. Ennio Forti, entrepreneur and knight of
labour, who lived there for thirty years before handing it over to the
Municipality of Venice in 1989. It is the current headquarters of the
Tide Forecasting and Signaling Center of the municipality of Venice and
a wedding venue.
The classically sixteenth-century facade is three stories high.
The ground floor has two portals on a small foundation overlooking
the canal.
The two noble floors, protruding from the ground
floor, are embellished by two four-light round windows with balustrades,
flanked by three single-lancet windows on each side with parapets.
A small attic with a terrace, dating from a more recent period, is
located on the central part of the top of the building, above the thin
serrated cornice that runs through the attic.
On the side facing
the calle, the building retains an ancient wooden liagò, a classic
terraced loggia, typical of noble Venetian architecture, of which few
examples survive.
Tide Forecast and Reporting Centre
At the
beginning of the 1970s, the Municipality of Venice set up the first tide
observation service, to signal the approach of serious events caused by
high tide with a siren placed on the bell tower of San Marco. In 1980,
following the flood of 1979, the new service of the Tide Forecasting and
Signaling Center was established, with the task of guaranteeing citizens
maximum information on the tide and an effective and timely warning
service, in the event of exceptional high tide . To fulfill these tasks,
the Center has progressively enriched itself with ever more perfected
systems, reaching a remarkable level of performance in monitoring,
forecasting and information.