Page 122 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Italy

120  NOR THEAST IT AL Y

Exploring the Palazzo Ducale Venice (both 1553–4). In the Sala
della Bussola, offenders awaited
A tour of the Palazzo Ducale takes visitors through a succession their fate in front of the Council
of richly decorated chambers and halls, arranged over three of Ten. The room’s bocca di leone
floors, culminating with the Bridge of Sighs, which links the (lion’s mouth) was used to post
palace to the prisons. Casanova was once imprisoned here secret denunciations and was
just one of several in the palace.
and made a daring escape from the Palazzo through a hole The wooden door here leads to
in the roof. the State Inquisitors’ Room and
thence to the torture chamber
and prisons. The Armoury – one
of the finest such collections
anywhere in Europe – occupies
the following rooms.
Sala del Maggior
Consiglio
The Scala dei Censori leads to
the second floor and past the
Sala del Guariento and Antonio
Rizzo’s statues of Adam and Eve
(1480s) to the magnificent Sala
del Maggior Consiglio. A vast
chamber, it was used as a
meeting place for the Great
Jacopo and Domenico Tintoretto’s Paradise, one of the world’s largest paintings, Council and for grand State
in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio banquets. By the mid-16th
century the Great Council had
and his counsellors met to around 2,000 members. Any
Scala d’Oro and receive ambassadors Venetian of high
Courtyard
and discuss matters birth over 25 was
A passage from the Porta del of State. Embellishing entitled to a seat
Frumento opens into the palace the magnificent unless he married
courtyard. The ticket office and ceiling are 11 a commoner.
palace entrance are to the left. paintings by Tintoretto’s huge
At the top of Antonio Rizzo’s 15th- Veronese. In the Paradise (1587–90)
century Giants’ Staircase, the new next room, the Sala occupies the
doge would be crowned with the del Senato, the eastern wall.
zogia or dogal cap. The Scala doge and some 200 A bocca di leone for Measuring 7.45 by
d’Oro (golden staircase), designed senators discussed denunciations 24.65 m (25 by 81 ft),
by Jacopo Sansovino, leads to the foreign affairs. The it is one of the
palace’s upper floors. It takes its paintings are by Tintoretto largest paintings in the world.
name, however, from the elabo- and pupils. The itinerary then continues in
rate gilt stucco vault created by more sombre vein, crossing the
Alessandro Vittoria (1554–8). Bridge of Sighs to enter the
Sala del Consiglio dei dank world of the prisons.
Dieci to the Armeria
Sala delle Quattro Porte The Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci
to the Sala del Senato
was the meeting room of the
The second flight of the Scala powerful Council of Ten,
d’Oro leads to the Sala delle founded in 1310 to protect
Quattro Porte, with a ceiling State security. Two fine works
designed by Palladio and by Veronese
frescoed by Tintoretto. The adorn the
end walls of the next room, ceiling: Age and
the Anticollegio, are decorated Youth and Juno
with mythological scenes by Offering the
Tintoretto, while Veronese’s Ducal Crown to
masterly Rape of Europa (1580),
opposite the window, is one of Dialectic (c.1577) by
the palace’s most dramatic Veronese in the Palazzo
works. The adjoining Sala del Ducale’s Sala
Collegio was where the doge del Collegio
For hotels and restaurants in this region see pp562–5 and pp580–84

120-121_EW_Italy.indd 120 4/4/17 5:32 PM
Eyewitness Travel LAYERS PRINTED:
Flashmap follow-on template “UK” LAYER
(Source v1.4)
Date 5th November 2012
Size 125mm x 217mm