The Procuratie are imposing buildings that rise in Venice, in the San Marco district, and which wrap around Piazza San Marco on three sides. They take their name from the fact that the procurators of San Marco stayed there. They are divided into three wings which almost entirely delimit the part of the square in front of the basilica of San Marco: the Procuratie Vecchie to the north, the Ala Napoleonica to the west and the Procuratie Nuove to the south.
The Procuratie Vecchie extend for 152 metres, from the Clock Tower
towards the Napoleonic Wing, with a portico of 50 arches, which
correspond to the 100 windows of the two upper floors. Although they are
rounded arches, the lightness of the openings recalls the
Venetian-Byzantine style of the first procuratie, built in the 12th
century under Doge Sebastiano Ziani (visible in Gentile Bellini's famous
painting Procession in Piazza San Marco) and intended for apartments for
the prosecutors "de citra", very high magistrates.
These, partly
damaged by fire at the beginning of the 16th century, were demolished
and rebuilt on a design of uncertain attribution: the names of Mauro
Codussi, Giovanni Celestro, Scarpagnino are mentioned. The works were
certainly entrusted in 1517 to Guglielmo dei Grigi and Bartolomeo Bon
the Younger and were completed in 1538, apparently with the contribution
of Jacopo Sansovino. To crown the building, a frieze was placed, opened
by a hundred small oval oculi, on which rests a white battlement with an
exclusive pictorial meaning.
Until 1989 they were the seat of the
Assicurazioni Generali offices. The complex of the Procuratie Vecchie
owned by Generali comprises approximately 12,400 m2 of gross total area,
which occupy approximately 85% of the total area of the portion of the
building that closes the north side of Piazza San Marco, equal to 43 of
the 50 arches external. In 2017 Generali announced the restoration of
the entire building by David Chipperfield Architects Milan. The
restoration was completed in 2022. On 8 April of the same year the
Procuratie Vecchie were inaugurated and from 13 April open to the public
for the first time in their 500-year history. Currently they house shops
on the ground floor and offices on the upper floors. On the third floor
is the headquarters of the Generali Foundation The Human Safety Net
ONLUS, a global movement of people who help people active in 24
countries in support of vulnerable families with children aged 0 to 6
and refugees who wish to enter host countries through work and
entrepreneurship. On the third floor it is possible to visit the
interactive exhibition "A World of Potential", through which visitors
can discover their strengths and contribute to the programs of the
Foundation.
The construction of the Procuratie Nuove, the work of Vincenzo
Scamozzi, began in 1583 on the area of the Orseolo hospice and some
buildings which (as seen in Bellini's painting) reached the height of
the bell tower of San Marco. The new building was instead aligned with
the northern elevation of the Sansoviniana Library, of which it
continues the architectural modules. The construction, interrupted in
1616 due to the death of Scamozzi, was finished in 1640 by Baldassarre
Longhena.
During the Italian Kingdom, they were used as the Royal
Palace; a function they also maintained under the Savoys, from 1866 to
1946. Today they house, on the upper floors, part of the Correr Museum,
the Risorgimento Museum, the Archaeological Museum, the Civic Museums
Directorate and part of the Marciana National Library. There is also the
eighteenth-century Caffè Florian.
The Procuratie closed in a horseshoe after Napoleon Bonaparte's order
to demolish the Church of San Geminiano (and the extensions of the
Procuratie aligned with it) to build the so-called "Napoleonic Wing" (or
also "Procuratie Nuovissime" or "Fabbrica new"). The church of San
Geminiano, one of the oldest in Venice, already attested in the sixth
century, had been renovated by Sansovino in 1557; the artist, proud of
this work, even chose an adjacent chapel to be buried there together
with his children.
Everything was demolished between 1807 and
1810, apparently by the will of Eugene de Beauharnais, who wanted to
complete the Royal Palace with a ballroom on the "most beautiful living
room in the world". The project was entrusted to Giuseppe Maria Soli,
who did not deviate much from the design of the Procuratie Nuove, except
for the attic with 14 statues of Roman emperors. In the centre, in the
Sotoportego San Geminian, there is the monumental entrance staircase,
with a ceiling fresco (The Glory of Neptune) by Sebastiano Santi. Inside
you can still admire the Napoleonic Hall by Lorenzo Santi (1822).
The building, finished towards the square in 1814, but completed
only during the Austrian Empire, has housed part of the Correr Museum
since 1922.