The Palazzo della Zecca is a public building in Venice, overlooking the Marciano pier. Built in the sixteenth century to a design by Jacopo Sansovino, it is now part of the Marciana National Library.
The mint was transferred in 1277 to San Marco da Rialto, where it had
been since the 9th century, and in the mid-16th century it moved to the
new building. The purpose of the move was to make it easier for the
Great Council to control it. From the 15th century the Venetian Mint
minted up to two million coins a year between gold and silver ducats. It
continued its activity under the Habsburg domination, to cease in 1870,
after the annexation to the Kingdom of Italy (1866).
Built
between 1537 and 1545 to be the seat of the mint of the Republic, the
building, made of Istrian stone, has severe shapes and develops on a
square plan, looking out onto an internal courtyard under whose 40
arches the activities took place. of minting of the coin. Since very
high temperatures were reached in the manufacturing process, no wood was
used in the construction, but only stone, which contained the heat
better and did not run the risk of catching fire.
The building is made up of two parts: the one on the San Marco Basin,
shaped like a deep atrium, and the more internal one which develops
around a rectangular courtyard.
The innermost part consists of a
first order of arches and ashlar, followed by arches on pillars and
pilasters which support the architrave.
Conversely, the facade on the Basin achieves a remarkable plastic,
structural and compositional value. Initially conceived on two floors,
the elevation now breaks with the traditional composition of an ashlar
embankment on the ground floor and motifs of the architectural order on
the upper level, choosing an intermediate and equidistant solution from
the combination of nature and artifice: on the ground floor the portico
holds the symbol of the "coffer", on the second register/order (1st
floor) there are semi-columns ringed with ashlars to support a double
architrave.
The third register/order (2nd floor) was added later,
probably to a design by Sansovino himself.
On the outside we
therefore find a classic lexicon with notable variations (constructive
and structural), typical of Mannerism: on the first order mixed elements
with ashlar, on the second order columns that support the Doric
entablature (complete with triglyphs).
The systematic use of
rusticated ashlar on the surface and in the orders, dear to Mannerist
architecture, is aimed at accentuating the character of the building as
a fortified place, seat of the gold deposit of the Republic.
Since the thirteenth century, the political surveillance of the
activity of the Mint was the exclusive task of the particular council of
the Republic called Quarantia: this, which also functioned as the
Supreme Court of the State, exercised sovereign prerogatives over the
minting and fineness of the coin, as well as preparing the plans
finances to be submitted to the approval of the Great Council.
After the creation, in the fourteenth century, of the Council of Ten,
the supreme supervisory body for state security, the material government
of the Mint was however entrusted to the Ten, until, starting from the
sixteenth century, this last function was not assigned to a series of
specific magistracies:
the Governors in the Mint, created in 1522,
had the general direction of the Mint;
the Depositary, created in
1543, in charge of supervising the public and private treasure conserved
in the Mint;
the Provveditori sopra Ori e Monete, created in 1551,
charged with supervising the price of gold, minted or not, to preserve
the price of the metal and the value of the coins, were later called
Deputati sopra Ori e Monete;
the added Inquisitor, created in 1687,
created in addition to the Provveditori sopra Ori e Monete to supervise
the course of national and foreign currency;
the Provveditore degli
Ori e Argenti, created in the seventeenth century, also had the function
of supervising the course of silver;
the Conservatore del Deposito,
created in 1615, had the duty to verify that public releases took place
in accordance with the law;
the Massari all'Argento e all'Oro,
created in 1269, technically carried out the estimate of the quantity of
precious metal stored in the Mint.
Finally, the Camerlenghi de Comùn,
i.e. the treasurers and general accountants of the Venetian state, had
one of their offices in the Mint.