CA' BARBARO piano nobile on sale in Venice

This splendid palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal consists of two parts: the older part of the building, in perfect Venetian gothic style, is called Palazzo Barbaro Curtis and dates back to the first half of the fifteenth century. It was built by the Spiera family and later bought by the Barbaro family who made it their stately home. The same Barbaro family it seems were descendants of a certain Marco who travelled to the Holy Lands with Doge Domenico Michiel in 1121 and recaptured the vexillum of San Marco from the Muslims. The building on the right, called simply Palazzo Barbaro (to distinguish it from the older part), is a narrow, high extension in the typical baroque style of the late 17th century built by Antonio Gaspari, the famous architect also responsible for Ca' Zenobio degli Armeni. In the following centuries the palazzo was visited by illustrious guests such as Robert Browning, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet and the writer Henry James who wrote The Aspern Papers here and described the magnificent ballroom in the novel The wings of the dove. The same magnificent baroque ballroom can be found on the 1,000 m2 second “piano nobile” with access to the canal, and permanent works by Sebastiano Ricci and Gian Battista Piazzetta. The wonderful works of art of Gian Battista Tiepolo, now kept in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, once adorned the walls of this fine manor.