Palazzo Michiel dalle Colonne is a palace in Venice, located in the Cannaregio district and overlooking the Grand Canal, next to Palazzo Michiel del Brusà and not far from Santa Sofia. Opposite the palace is Campo della Pescaria, the area where the Rialto market is held.
The building may have been built in the 13th century by the Grimani
family, whose coat of arms is carved into a coeval well-curb located in
the courtyard adjacent to the entrance. Originally it must have followed
the Venetian-Byzantine style typical of the period, with lines very
similar to those of the nearby ca' da Mosto.
It still belonged to
the Grimani in 1500, when it was immortalized in the well-known map by
Jacopo de' Barbari: it consisted of a compact volume with a rectangular
plan, developed on three levels, with a tripartite façade and a
four-pitch roof; the base was already characterized by the loggia with
seven arches which gave its name to the building, surmounted on the
upper floor by a mullioned window with two pairs of windows on each
side. Indeed, the portico has characteristics that would date it to the
14th century.
Since 1661 the palace has been certified as the
property of a branch of the Zen which was nicknamed, not surprisingly,
"from the Columns". We owe them the partial rebuilding of the house
based on a project by Antonio Gaspari, completed in 1697.
In 1702
the palace was sold to Ferdinando Carlo di Gonzaga-Nevers, the last duke
of Mantua and Monferrato. He lived there permanently from 1706, when he
was overthrown by the Austrians who emerged victorious from the War of
the Spanish Succession.
In 1712, after the duke had died a few
years ago (1708), the palace was bought by the Conigli family, nobles of
Verona. It seems they never used it and in 1714 they sold it to a branch
of the Michiel patricians, who already owned various other buildings
scattered between Santa Sofia and the Santi Apostoli. Like the Zen
before it, this line also took on the specification "from the Pillars".
Further interventions are owed to the Michiels, both to renovate the
palace after years of neglect, and to create an architectural union with
another adjacent property, the Michiel del Brusà palace.
In 1716
it hosted the elector Frederick Augustus I of Saxony (future king of
Poland) and Duke Carlo Alberto of Bavaria (future emperor), who came to
assist in the "forces of Hercules" which the Nicolottis competed.
Most of the internal decorations, probably made by Michelangelo
Morlaiter and Francesco Zanchi on the occasion of the wedding between
Marcantonio Michiel and Giustina Renier, date back to 1775.
Further transformations took place in the first half of the 19th century
and concerned the organization of the interior. In 1834 the properties
passed to the nephew of Giustina Renier, Leopardo Martinengo, to then be
inherited, in 1884, by the Donà delle Rose.
In the 1930s the
building was sold to the Provincial Federation of the Combat Fasci and
housed the house of the Venetian Fascio (for this reason it was renamed
"Ca' Littoria"). After the Second World War, after a period of
occupation by displaced persons and trade union organizations who
converted it into the headquarters of the Chamber of Labor with the name
of "Ca' Matteotti". But in 1954, with an intervention by the police
department, the building was cleared and returned to the state property.
Currently the building is registered among the public property
assets belonging to the historical-artistic branch, as it is subject to
the constraint of historical-artistic interest by the Superintendency
for Cultural Heritage of Venice. The palace underwent restoration work
in 2002-2003.
The building, with perfectly symmetrical shapes, consists of three
levels plus a mezzanine in the attic. There are two main floors, of
similar size and structure.
The facade of Palazzo Michiel is in
Baroque style, but is influenced by the Venetian-Byzantine tradition in
its most peculiar feature, the ground floor portico: it is the only part
of the eighteenth-century facade that recalls the features of the old
building; however, the alterations can be seen in the presence, between
the six round arches supported by columns, of a serliana, one of the
most used architectural elements by Gaspari.
The theme of the
serliana recurs on the noble floors, where there are two superimposed,
between pairs of rectangular single-lancet windows all surmounted by
very particular tympanums: in fact, each one is broken in the center to
house stone busts.
All the openings of the façade, including the
portico and the six small single-lancet windows of the mezzanine, are
closed off by a balustrade.
Inside there are stuccoes from the
second half of the eighteenth century, the work of Michelangelo
Morlaiter.