Ca' Pesaro

Ca' Pesaro is a grand Baroque palazzo on the Grand Canal in Santa Croce, its heavy rusticated base and double loggias of colossal columns among the most theatrical facades on the canal. Since 1902 it has housed Venice's collection of modern art -- including Gustav Klimt's Judith II -- alongside a substantial museum of East Asian art, giving one of the city's most flamboyant 17th-century buildings a thoroughly contemporary use.

One ticket covers both the modern art gallery and the Museum of Oriental Art, and the revenue goes to the Fondazione Musei Civici, which maintains a network of eleven museums across the city. Paying to enter a lesser-visited one is a more useful contribution than another ticket to the busiest.

Photography rules vary by room and by temporary exhibition, and the Klimt in particular is often restricted -- the signage is the authority, not the general permission at the entrance.

The Museum of Oriental Art upstairs holds some 30,000 objects taken largely from Edo-period Japan, assembled during a 19th-century collecting expedition. It is worth seeing and worth seeing knowingly: collections of this kind were formed under conditions that no longer look neutral.

Ca' Pesaro absorbs visitors easily and Santa Croce needs them more than San Marco does. Coming here on a busy day is one of the straightforward ways to put a visit where it does least harm.

Ca' Pesaro is a ticketed museum, with a single admission covering both the modern art gallery and the Museum of Oriental Art; no advance reservation is required. It's a short walk from the San Stae vaporetto stop on the Grand Canal, in the Santa Croce district.

As one of Venice's civic museums, Ca' Pesaro keeps museum hours and is normally closed on Mondays, with shorter opening in winter than in summer -- worth confirming before a special trip, since the Santa Croce location is not somewhere most people pass by chance.

The building is at its best in the late afternoon, when low sun rakes across the diamond-point rustication and the recessed loggias and the facade does what it was designed to do. At midday the front flattens out considerably.

Inside, the galleries are lit from the canal side, so the modern collection -- Klimt's Judith II especially -- is best seen in bright daylight hours rather than in the last hour before closing.

Crowds are never a serious factor. This is one of the least pressured major museums in Venice, and it is a genuine option on the days when the Accademia and the Doge's Palace are at their worst.