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The Doge's Palace
Palazzo Ducale / Doge's PalacePiazzetta San Marco
Vaporetto: San Zaccaria, San Marco-Giardinetti, or San Marco-Vallaresso
tel. +39-041-271-5911
www.museiciviciveneziani.it
Book tour: Viator.com
Open daily 9am–6:30pmpm (to 5:30pm Nov–Mar)
Adm
A Viator.com tour:
• Skip the Line: Venice Walking Tour with Doges Palace
Sights nearby
*** Piazza San Marco
*** St. Marks' Basilica
*** Grand Canal
* Campanile di San Marco (bell tower)
Museo Civico Correr
Bacino Orseolo (gondola parking lot)
Where to eat nearby
Bistrot de Venise (meal)
Da Aciugheta (meal/pizza)
Osteria a la Campana (light meal)
Vino Vino (light meal)
Rosticceria Teatro Goldoni (light meal/snack)
Hotels nearby
*** Hotel Danieli (splurge)** Hotel ai do Mori (moderate)** Hotel Violino d'Oro (moderate) *Hotel Metropole [premier] Hotel La Residenza [cheap] *Foresteria Valdese [super-cheap] Hotel Caneva [super-cheap]» More hotels in Castello from Venere.com
» More hotels in Castello from Booking.com
» More hotels in San Marco from Venere.com
» More hotels in San Marco from Booking.com
» More hotels in Castello from Venere.com
» More hotels in Castello from Booking.com
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» THE VENICE BOOKSHELF
The Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) in Venice, Italy
The Doge's Palace (Palazzo Ducale) in Venice.One of Italy's grandest and most history-saturated town halls, Vence's Palazzo Ducal (Doges or Ducal Palace) is a massive Gothic-Renaissance confection raised in 1309, and rebuilt after a 1577 fire.
The public halls of the Doge's Palace are heavily decorated with canvases and frescoes by Venice's greatest artists—works by Veronese and Tintoretto are exceedingly abundant.
The signposted route walks you through, and will take about 45 minutes to an hour and a half depending on how interested you get.
The Bridge of Sighs crosses the Rio di Palazzo, so for the full effect you need to see it from the outside. Best vantage point: stand on the next bridge down the canal, a wide ponte crossing the Rio di Palazzo along the Riva degli Schiavoni. (I call it the "Bridge of Tourists Looking at the Bridge of Sighs.")
Off the back of the building, you cross over the famous, enclosed Bridge of Sighs (Ponte dei Sospiri), named by romantic-era writers who imagined condemned prisoners letting out a lament as they crossed and got their final glimpse of Venice and her lagoon through the tiny windows in the center. The cells on the other side preserve the scrawls and graffiti of ancient prisoners.
But even with an informative audioguide and the English placards describing the artworks and the civic purpose of each room, I find that simply wandering the public halls and nothing else leaves me a bit cold.
The "Secret Itineraries" tour of the Doge's Palace
Getting voted off the island
Any Venetian citizen could accuse someone of misdeeds by writing the denunciation down and slipping it through specially placed "Lion's Mouth" slots in the Palazzo Ducale's walls.
While this activity sounds like prime breeding ground for backstabbing, it was a highly regulated procedure. All accusations had to be signed and witnessed, and if they proved merely to be slanderous and not actionable, the would-be denouncer was in serious legal trouble of his own.
The real governing of the Venetian Republic was not done here in plain sight.
True power was wielded in a network of low-ceilinged, wooden-plank corridors and tiny offices wrapped around this public palace like a clandestine cocoon, the entrances hidden behind secret doors set into all those fancy oil paintings and carved woodwork of the public rooms.
Here private secretaries kept records and compiled accusations made against people both lowly and high-placed (see the box to the right).
The only way to see this inner sanctum—and for the best primer on Venetian politics and historical intrigues—is to take the excellent 90-minute "Secret Itineraries" tour. This just might be the best sight tour in all of Italy—not necessarily because of the guide (some are better than others), but because of the secret world you get to see.
This tour will show you where the dreaded Council of Ten met to decide the fate of the Republic—and the people who crossed them—the inquisition room, and the "leads," the prison cells in the roof rafters where your guide will recount the tale of Casanova's famous escape.
So what's a doge, anwyay?
The Palazzo Ducale is Venice's ducal palace, and in old Venetian dialect, the duke was called the doge or doxe, after the Latin dux, a military leader (which is what dukes originally were; the title of "duke" was the feudal equivalent to "army general.")
In Venice, however, the doge was neither a military man nor an autocratic ruler. The doge was the head of state, but acted in essence as the highest-level servant of the Republic.
A doge was elevated from among the arisocracy, was almost always of an extremely advanced age (they served for life, but no one wanted any one doge to have power for too long), and was chosen through a process filed with so much chance and round-robins of elimination as to be thoroughly fair and random.
The doge was paid a ridiculously enormous salary so that no outside force could afford to bribe him, and his every move was surpervised. The system worked surisingly well. From the first doge elected in AD 700 until Napoleon deposed the last one in 1797, only twice was the office betrayed by traitors or major corruption.Best part of the tour: Your group keeps popping out of secret doorways into the public rooms only to vanish behind another hodden panel, surprising all the tourists milling about who didn't book this tour and making them insanely jealous.
After the tour, you are free to to tour the rest of the palace's public rooms on your own.
Tips
- Planning your day: Touring the public areas takes about 45 minutes—maybe an hour to 75 minutes if you stop to read all the inforamtive plaques. The Secret Itineraries tour takes roughly 75 minutes (after which you'll likely want to wander the public spaces for another 30 minutes or so).
- You'll want to book the Secret Itineraries tour in advance—not necessarily way in advance, but at least a day or two before, as there are only a few tours in English each day (at 9:55am, 10:45am, and 11:35am) and they can fill up quickly, especially in summer. Stop by, call +39-041-4273-0892 from abroad or 848-082-000 in Italy, or book a tour right now via our partner site Viator.com.
If the timing doesn't just work out for you and you're really gung-ho to do this tour, for an extra €31 per group (on the top of the €18 tour) you can schedule a private "Secret Itineraries" tour at any time after 1pm (though these private tours are suspended in July and August). - The standard admission ticket to the Doge's Palace actually covers four museums on the square—hence its name: I Musei di Piazza San Marco—so you might as well use it to pop into at least the Museo Civico Correr, though if you're pressed for time, go ahead and skip the less interesting Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Archaeological Museum) and Sale Monumentali della Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (frescoed, monumental rooms of the Marciana Library).
- If, in addition to those museums on Piazza San Marco, you intend also to visit the Ca' Rezzonico and at least two of the other sights it covers—like the Ca’ Pesaro or the Glass Museum on Murano—go ahead and buy the Venice Museum Pass; it'll save you money.
- Visit after 1pm—and buy your ticket ahead of time at Venice Connected—and you can get an Afternoon Ticket at a slight discount.
Related pages
- Ca d'Oro - The grandest of the private palaces along the Grand Canal
- Palazzi in Venice
- Other fun Venice tours
- More sights in San Marco district
- Sights in neighboring Castello district
- Sights in neighboring Cannaregio district
- Sightseeing in Venice
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This material was last updated February 2011. All information was accurate at the time.
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