Discover Ca' Foscari

The facade is a textbook run of Venetian Floral Gothic, and its whole effect comes from two stacked window bands. Each piano nobile carries an eight-light opening -- an ottafora -- across the centre of the front, the upper one with ogee arches and pierced quatrefoil tracery above them, the lower one slightly plainer. Very few Venetian palaces attempt eight lights; most stop at six. The capitals are carved with foliage, animals and grotesque masks, close enough to the water to be read from a passing boat.

Between the two bands runs a marble frieze bearing the Foscari arms and a helmet crowned with a lion -- a direct reference to the doge's role as the Republic's military commander. It sits at the exact centre of the composition, and it is the reason the facade reads as a proclamation of one man's office rather than as decoration.

The building stands on ground that was cleared for it. The Republic sold Francesco Foscari the site of an older building known as the House with the Two Towers in 1453; he demolished it and pushed the new footprint forward so the palace would sit directly on the water, which is why it commands the bend rather than sitting back from it.

Inside, the 20th century is present as well. Carlo Scarpa remodelled the Aula Baratto in the 1930s and again in the 1950s, inserting timber, glass and his own detailing into the Gothic shell without pretending to match it -- one of the most studied modern interventions in a historic Venetian building.