Discover Casanova Museo

Palazzo Pesaro Papafava is a 15th-century Venetian Gothic palace in Cannaregio, and the museum occupies its piano nobile -- the raised main floor where a patrician family's reception rooms sat, above the ground-floor storage that flooding made unusable for living.

The plan is the standard Venetian one and is easy to read as you walk it: a long central hall running the depth of the building, with rooms opening off both sides. That hall exists because a deep, narrow site squeezed between neighbours can only be lit and ventilated from its two short ends.

The palace has a garden, which is rare in Venice and rarer still in Cannaregio, where the building grain is tight. Its Gothic openings are simpler than the traceried windows of the grand Grand Canal palaces -- this was a substantial family house rather than a display piece.