Palazzo Bernardo, also known as Palazzo Giustinian Bernardo, is a palace in Venice, located in the San Polo district, not far from Campo San Polo, and overlooking the Grand Canal, on the corner with Rio de la Madoneta, between Palazzo Querini Dubois and Casa Sicher, near Palazzo Donà in Sant'Aponal.
It was built by the Bernardo family in the first half of the
fifteenth century in the typically Venetian late-Gothic style, which had
as its model the expansion of Palazzo Ducale begun in 1422.
The
palace was to be completed in 1442, when the Republic hosted the Duke of
Milan Francesco Sforza and his wife Bianca Visconti.
After having
been owned by the Bernardo family for a long time, the Palazzo was sold
on 14 April 1651 to Bortolo Bellotto, a merchant who had made his
fortune thanks to the sale of hides. The latter, a few decades later, in
1694, resold it to Pietro and Simone Bernardo, merchants of colors and
"original citizens" of the Serenissima (non-noble honorific title
attributed to families of the Serenissima). The Bernardo family acquired
the count title only in 1780, thanks to Alessandro Bernardo.
Subsequently, the Palazzo changed hands several times, until in 1882 it
became the property of Pietro Naratovich, a well-known publisher of the
time, who installed the presses of his own typography there. It was the
beginning of the decline of Palazzo Bernardo: later, in fact, it was
divided into several properties and heavily disfigured. Currently the
Palace is partly used as a university seat and partly owned by the noble
Azzoni Avogadro family.
The facade on the Grand Canal is evidently divided into three parts:
enclosed between corner frames in Istrian stone, it stands out above all
for the presence of two extremely elegant hexaphoras on the first and
second floors and for the smaller quadrifora on the top floor.
All the decorative levels are punctuated by elegant string course
frames. However, the most curious aspects of the facade are the presence
of two water portals (which suggests a two-family use of the Palazzo)
and the misalignment of the lower hexaphora, which appears as
subordinate to that of the second floor.