Palazzo Ferro Fini is a palace in Venice located in the San Marco
district, overlooking the Grand Canal next to the Rio dell'Alboro.
Almost opposite, on the other bank of the Grand Canal, is the basilica
of Santa Maria della Salute. It is the seat of the Veneto Regional
Council.
It is formed by
the union of two separate buildings: Palazzo Flangini Fini, which is
wider, and Palazzo Manolesso Ferro. Traveling along the Grand Canal
towards San Marco Basin, it is on the left, after Palazzo Pisani Gritti
and before Palazzo Contarini Fasan.
Palazzo Flangini Fini was in turn divided into two buildings (one
larger than the Contarinis, the other the Da Pontes), before the Greek
lawyer Tommaso Flangini bought them both in 1638, entrusting their
reconstruction to Pietro Bettinelli. Passed by testamentary bequest to
the Greek community of Venice, they were purchased in 1662 by another
Greek lawyer, Girolamo Fini, who commissioned Alessandro Tremignon to
standardize the façade and complete the interiors.
Palazzo
Manolesso Ferro, purchased in the late 14th century by Doge Michele
Morosini, passed towards 1740 to the Ferro family and from them by
inheritance to the Manolesso family. In the 1860s it became Hotel Nuova
York.
A few decades later the Ivancichs, shipowners, bought both
buildings and unified them into a Grand Hotel which had great prestige
until the Second World War. In 1972 it became the property of the Veneto
Region, which started the long and careful restorations.
Palazzo Flangini Fini has an asymmetrical facade of majestic
classicism, with polyfore and single lancet windows with round arched
heads on the two noble floors and similar water portals. Also noteworthy
are the stringcourses and the eaves line.
The facade of Palazzo
Manolesso Ferro, older, combines different styles: the mezzanine has a
three-mullioned window in Renaissance style; on the first noble floor
there are Gothic windows with trefoil arches, while on the second floor
the classical references return in the round arches.
The
restorations carried out by the Veneto Region aimed, on the one hand, at
recovering the original subdivision of the spaces, altered over the
centuries by the various uses (eg atrium on the ground floor, portego on
the noble floor, courtyards); on the other hand, the adaptation of the
complex to the new function of institutional headquarters.
The
interiors of the building are embellished with frescoes, stuccos, Murano
glass. The ceiling of the office of the President of the Regional
Council has a fresco with a mythological subject by Pietro Liberi.