Palazzi Barbaro

The Palazzi Barbaro are a pair of adjoining palaces on the Grand Canal -- one Gothic, one Baroque -- that served for centuries as the Barbaro family's residence and later became one of the great gathering places of American expatriate culture in Venice. Henry James finished a novel here, John Singer Sargent painted its salon, and its Baroque ballroom still holds one of the finest surviving interiors of its kind in the city.

This is a private house in private hands, not a museum with an off day. There is no admission, no bell to ring and no arrangement to be negotiated at the door; the facade from the canal or the bridge is the whole of the public experience.

The Accademia Bridge is a working crossing carrying an enormous volume of people. Stopping on it to photograph is normal and expected, but doing it at the parapet rather than in the walkway is the difference between joining the flow and obstructing it.

Gondolas work this stretch heavily because of the view, and the wash on this reach is a genuine problem for the buildings' foundations. The vaporetto passes the same facades for a fraction of the price and adds nothing to the load.

The Palazzi Barbaro are privately owned and not open to public visits. The Grand Canal facade can be seen from the water -- by vaporetto, gondola, or water taxi -- along the stretch between the Accademia Bridge and Campo Santo Stefano.

The Accademia Bridge is the place to see it from, and its own crowd sets the timing: it is shoulder to shoulder from mid-morning until well after sunset, and genuinely quiet only before about eight.

The facades face north-west and are lit from mid-afternoon onward, with the best hour just before sunset when the low sun crosses the canal and the Gothic tracery on the older wing throws real shadow. Morning gives quiet but flat light -- the two do not coincide.

From the water, line 1 passes close and slowly; the Accademia and Santa Maria del Giglio stops both sit within a couple of minutes' walk, so this is easy to fold into an approach to the Gallerie dell'Accademia rather than made into a trip of its own.

The palace occasionally opens for cultural events and during the Biennale, which is the only realistic way anyone sees the ballroom -- worth checking listings if the interior is the reason for the interest.