Palazzo Zane Collalto is a palace in Venice, located in the San Polo district, overlooking a minor stream not far from Campo Sant'Agostin.
The palace is the work of 1665 by the famous architect Baldassarre Longhena, after whose death Antonio Gaspari took over, to complete the residence commissioned by the Zane family. After 1783 the Collalto family took over the Zane family. Longhena was commissioned by the Zane family, one of the richest Venetian dynasties of the 16th century, of which he was proto (master builder), and he carried out his project by designing a facade which, albeit in a minor tone, recalls some formal solutions present in other civil architectures of the same author In particular, we note the organizational methods of the openings of the facade which recall elements present in Ca' Pesaro, another famous work by Longhena In the twenty-first century the building, in a good state of conservation, was the seat of a school and hosted a foundation for French romantic music and is accessible to the public. The Province of Venice has taken care of the recovery of a part in recent years. An important restoration has involved the Ca' Zane casino, an accessory but strongly characterizing work of the complex, it is a building present in the beautiful seventeenth-century garden and which housed a casino for gaming and a family library.
The white Istrian stone facade of Palazzo Zane Collalto highlights
the presence of a ground floor dominated by two main floors.
If
we exclude the surviving remains of the two levels of a pre-existing
minor building adjacent to the left side of the facade, the facade is
symmetrical, with two large arched portals on the opposite canal.
Above, the two noble floors are noteworthy above all for the two
round five-light windows, placed centrally and all with a large mask on
the keystone, an element that also characterizes the two lateral
single-lancet windows, from which the central openings also differ for
the presence of balustrades: protruding that of the first floor, at the
level of the façade that of the second.
Also important in the
overall composition of the work is the seventeenth-century garden
located at the back of the main building and served by a water door. In
the garden is the Ca' Zane casino, an architecture dedicated to play and
study, with a ballroom on the ground floor and finely decorated and
frescoed rooms (there are frescoes attributed to Sebastiano Ricci).